The Stolen Gold Affair (2020) by Bill Pronzini

Last year, I posted a short story review under the title "The Nameless Detective: "The Hills of Homicide" (1949) by Louis L'Amour," which is best described as a western-flavored, hardboiled locked room mystery solved by a Los Angeles private eye – whose name is never revealed. So labeled the story as a curious ancestor of Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" series, but recently stumbled across a much more fascinating link with Pronzini's historical private eye novels. I'm not talking about the handful of Carpenter and Quincannon short stories that originally appeared in Louis L'Amour Western Magazine during the mid-1990s. 

"The Hills of Homicide" mentioned in passing miners, or high-graders, smuggling gold ore out of a mine under seemingly impossible circumstances, but it was an anecdote without an answer. I closed out the review with my own solution to the problem of the pilfering miners. Not a bad solution, if I say so myself. However, I was less pleased with past Tom's cleverness when coming across an identical impossible situation in one of the latest Carpenter and Quincannon novels. Did I inadvertently spoil a locked room mystery by coming up with the best possible explanation for a rather one-of-a-kind locked room problem? Only one way to find out! 

The Stolen Gold Affair (2020) is the eight, of currently nine, novels about John Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter, Professional Detective Services, who operate in 1890s San Francisco when the glory days of the Old West began to wane and fade – as a new century dawned. A time when the line between the American frontier and the settled states blurred and motorcars, or horseless carriages, began to replace "horse-drawn conveyances as the primary method of transportation." One of the constants in this ever-changing world is the always adaptable criminal.

John Quincannon is summoned by one of the city's wealthiest businessmen, Everett Hoxley, to his social club to discuss a particular vexing and costly problem.

Hoxley is the head of a large mining corporation that "owned several gold and silver mines in northern California and Nevada," but the production of high-quality ore in the Monarch Mine has dropped noticeably and there have been rumors of high-grading. So he wants Quincannon to go undercover as a newly hired timberman to "identify the individuals responsible for an insidious high-grading operation" and "to put a satisfactory end to their activities," which comes with a generous fee, expensive and a possible bonus. Only obstacle is that it's likely a four-week assignment and his marriage to Sabina Carpenter is planned three weeks from then. But that's the life of a detective.

Quincannon arrives in the small mining settlement of Patch Creek, northeast of Marysville, under the alias J.F. Quinn where's confronted with multiple, quasi-impossible crimes and a full-blown "locked room" murder – twelve-hundred feet underground! Firstly, he not only has to identify the gang of high-graders, but figure out how they were refining gold-bearing ore to produce pure gold dust in "a mine operating with mostly full crews twenty-four hours a day." Secondly, the method used to smuggle the gold out of the mine. Thirdly, he has to do all that while doing eight-hour of backbreaking, mining labor in "the dangerous bowels of the earth." A place where cave-ins, premature detonations, rock gas and runaway cages or tramcars were greater threats to his health than "the actions of a gang of gold thieves." Quincannon believes there's "no better detective in the Western states" and gets some quick results, but, having stumbled across an important piece of evidence, he is knocked out in a abandoned, dead-end crosscut. He's awakened by the sound of a pistol shot and is found next to a dead body. There's only one way in and out of crosscut, which was in sight of several miners when the shot sounded. Nobody else entered or left the crosscut. So "as pretty a frame as ever had been set around an innocent man."

The passages of the story that takes place in the mine are the best part of the book, but the solutions to the various problems vary enormously in quality. The locked room-trick used for the shooting is good and simple, which nicely fitted both the underground conditions and the circumstances in that crosscut. Indubitably, the best plot-strand of the Monarch Mine case. Quincannon more or less stumbles across the refining process, but a clever little criminal operation nonetheless. Regrettably, the method used to the smuggle out the gold was a huge letdown, because I expected something a little more ingenious rather than a gross oversight on the part of the shift inspectors. But they remain the best and most memorable parts of the whole book.

So, while Quincannon is playing the Sherlock Holmes of Agartha in the Earth's crust, Sabina is holding down the fort, but the detective business experiences one of its slack periods and only has two minor cases on her hands.

Firstly, Sabina is doing a background check on an unsavory character who turned up in Quincannon's case and how to get that information to him, because Patch Creek didn't have a Western Union office. Secondly, she unofficially and unethically ended "the criminal careers of a confidence man and an embezzler" without a paying client or earning "so much as one thin dime," which is a cardinal sin – to "John's way of thinking." They meet up again in the last quarter to hunt down the last high-grader as the story becomes a charming, well written period railway mystery with an impossible disappearance as their quarry vanishes from a moving train without a trace.

One thing to remember is that the novels in this series are rewrites and expansions of the short Carpenter and Quincannon stories that appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Louis L'Amour Western Magazine from 1994 to 2018. The Stolen Gold Affair is an expansion of "The Desert Limited" (LLWM, Nov. 1995) and "The Gold Stealers" (EQMM, Sep/Oct. 2014), but had previously only read "The Desert Limited" in Carpenter and Quincannon: Professional Detective Servives (1998) and hoped the solution would be better in a novel-length treatment. There are some clever touches to it (how Sabina solved it and why Quincannon missed it), but not everything holds up. I thought (ROT13) Zbetna hfvat “fbzr fbeg bs ehfr gb trg gur onttntr znfgre gb bcra hc” was a cop-out answer and too easily glossed over. That was suppose to be a legitimate obstacle in closed, moving locked room and presenting it as "an educated guest" doesn't make it any less unfair.

That being said, my opinion of the short story at the time is that the whole trick and setting would probably work better in a visual medium, which is also true for its expanded version in The Stolen Gold Affair. I believe this series, particular its novel-length treatments, would make perfect source material for a television series as it has everything on the ready. A beautiful, striking period backdrop during a time of great change with two great, memorable lead-characters who came with their own personal, and intertwined, storylines – culminating in their marriage. There's also the ongoing storyline with the crackpot Sherlock that ran through multiple novels (beginning with The Bughouse Affair, 2013) and ready-made plots that are neither overly complicated or insultingly simplistic. Some of the impossibilities from this series would translate beautifully to the small screen like the ghostly apparitions in The Spook Lights Affair (2013). Not to mention Pronzini and Marcia Muller's time-crossing crossover, Beyond the Grave (1986), can be adapted to give such a TV-series a strong and memorable ending.

So, on a whole, I did enjoy my time with The Stolen Gold Affair with the chapters that take place underground and the impossible shooting in the crosscut standing out, but the problem is that they were noticeably better done than the other plot-strands. So it's the Monarch Mine case that's the main attraction of The Stolen Gold Affair and comes particular recommended to locked room readers as there are not that many impossible crime stories that use the woefully underutilized mine setting. Pronzini demonstrated what you can do with a deeply buried, rock-solid locked room situation. Just one question remains... did that throwaway anecdote from "The Hills of Homicide" gave Pronzini the idea for the "The Gold Stealers" or was it Clyde B. Clason's Blind Drifts (1937)? An impossible crime novel with a mine setting Pronzini fanboyed all over it.

The Devil is Everywhere: "Triangle at Rhodes" (1936) by Agatha Christie

Last time, I revisited Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun (1941), a classic of the simon-pure jigsaw puzzle detective story, which served as a reminder why Christie towered above so many of her contemporaries and made me want to take another look at an earlier, shorter version of the novel – generally considered to be one of her better short stories. So did it stand up to rereading? Let's find out! 

Christie's "Triangle at Rhodes" was originally published in the February 2, 1936, issue of This Week, reprinted in the May, 1936, publication of The Strand Magazine and finally collected in Murder in the Mew and Other Stories (1937). 

"Triangle at Rhodes" takes place on the titular, sun-soaked island where the celebrated Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, had come to for a much deserved rest and holiday. A hopefully non-criminal, corpse-free holiday and he had booked his holiday during a period when Rhodes would be nearly empty. So the island resembled "a peaceful, secluded spot" outside of the tourist season with only a small group of guests staying at the hotel, but, even within that "restricted circle," Poirot noticed "the inevitable shaping of events to come." The internal triangle!

This small circle of holidaymakers comprises of Miss Pamela Lyall, a student of human nature, who's "capable of speaking to strangers on sight" instead of "allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance" as "is the customary British habit" – acting, more or less, as the female counterpart of Arthur Hastings. Pamela is there on holiday with a friend, Miss Sarah Blake. Old General Barnes is "a veteran who was usually in the company of the young" or boring other guests with anecdotes military career in India, but the foreboding, triangle-shaped patterns take shape among two married couples, the Chantrys and the Golds.

Valentine Chantry is a "man-eating tiger" who widowed one husband, lost three in the divorce courts and recently married a navy officer, Commander Tony Chantry. Douglas Gold is a good looking, golden-headed man who there with his mousy-looking wife, Marjorie, but becomes infatuated with Valentine. So the familiar, age-old pattern of murder begins to take shape and ends with Valentine drinking poisoned gin and an arrest.

Poirot and Pamela were the only ones who observes the eternal triangle take shape, but Pamela saw it "the wrong way round" and here the story turned out to be weaker than I remembered. There's no meaningful clueing or misdirection with its only strong points being its geometrical plot-structure and how beautifully the ending reversed the whole situation, but the conclusion played out off-page with Poirot being an eyewitness to the murderer's handiwork – telling the reader about it afterwards. So plenty of good ideas here, but not very satisfying as a detective story nor anywhere near as good as its novel-length treatment. That's a shame as I used think "Triangle at Rhodes" would easily make my top 10 of best short detective stories. Don't worry. Christie will still be represented on such a hypothetical, future list with the massively under appreciated "Wireless" (1926).

Evil Under the Sun (1941) by Agatha Christie

Previously, I reviewed three originally non-English or untranslated detective novels, namely Mika Waltari's Kuka murhasi rouva Skrofin? (Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll?, 1939), Ton Vervoort's Moord onder maagden (Murder Among Virgins, 1965) and Seimaru Amagi's Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998), but promised to end my little world tour to return to the civilized, English-speaking world – which gave me an idea. Why not revisit another timeless classic that I have only read before in a Dutch translation? Something I did last month with John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939). 

So my pick was between Ellery Queen's The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932) and Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun (1941), but the latter seemed more appropriate for the time of year. 

Evil Under the Sun takes place on a small, fictitious island off Leathercombe Beach, Devon, where an 18th century sea captain had made his home and left his descendants with a cumbersome inheritance, but the 1920s birthed "the great cult of the Seaside for Holidays" – property was sold and developed into a tourist destination. The Jolly Roger Hotel, Smugglers' Island, is "usually packed to the attics" during the holiday season. A quiet, peaceful place where the sun shines, the sea is blue and the beaches packed with sunbathers. Not exactly "the sort of place you'd get a body," but Hercule Poirot knows all to well that "there is evil everywhere under the sun." And evil comes to the island to cut the detective's holiday short!

Arlena Stuart is a retired stage actress who's as famous as she's notorious, "fatally attractive," who has the habit of making "men go crazy about her" everywhere she goes. She was cited in the Codrington divorce case, but Lord Codrington turned her down flat when the divorce was finalized. Only for the gallant Kenneth Marshell to come to the rescue and married the scandal plagued actress. Arlena and Kenneth Marshell are spending their holiday on Smugglers' Island with Kenneth's adolescent daughter, Linda, but trouble begins as soon as Arlena sets foot on the island.

There's another, much younger, married couple staying on the island, the Redferns. Christine is a quiet, nice looking woman in "her fair washed-out way," but her husband, Patrick, is a handsome and athletic man with "a kind of infectious enjoyment and gaiety" about him. Patrick becomes quite infatuated with Arlena and they're very open about it, which naturally puts a strain on the situation. But there are more people who a problem with that devil of woman.

Rosamund Darnley is a well-known, successful dressmaker and a childhood love-interest of Kenneth, but she's worried what kind of influence she has on her stepdaughter, Linda, who's not particular fond of her stepmother – which is why she asks him to divorce her. Kenneth is determined to stick to the 'till-death-do-us-part bit of his marriage vows. Reverend Stephen Lane is another hotel guest and a religious fanatic who believes evil walks the earth and its name is Arlena Stuart Marshell. In addition to a few less suspicious-looking hotel guests who get to witness this prelude to murder. Such as the retired Major Barry ("a teller of long and boring stories"), Miss Emily Brewster ("a tough athletic woman" who disliked women "smashing up homes"), Horace Blatt (who tries "to be the life and soul of any place he happened to be in") and the Gardeners ("those yapping Americans"). But then again, is anyone ever really above suspicion in a detective novel?

Hercule Poirot can feel there's murder in the air, but, as he said once before in Egypt, that "if a
person is determined to commit murder it is not easy to prevent them." So everyone's holiday comes to an abrupt end when Arlena is found strangled to death on the beach of Pixy Cove. Inspector Colgate is only too happy to accept Poirot's help and give him a free hand.

So now he has to gather and arrange "every strange-shaped little piece" of the puzzle, physical and psychological, as he tries to see where every piece fits to get a clear and comprehensible picture of the murder. Clues such as an overheard conversation and an empty bottle thrown from a window. A bath that no one would admit to having taken. A new pair of scissors and a smashed pipe found at the crime scene. A green calendar and skein of magenta wool with several pesky, somewhat unusual alibis hinging on typewriters, wristwatches and physical impossibilities complicating the case even further – while blackmail, dope smuggling and witchcraft discreetly hover in the background. This all sounds like an incredibly tricky, labyrinthine-plotted detective story, but it actually might be one of Christie's simplest and most uncomplicated novels. She just knew how to play the reader like a fiddle.

I largely remembered the who-and how with only the why having become muddled in my memory, but, as the story began to fill in the blanks, I was reminded why Christie is the Queen of Crime. Carr and Christie are the only readers who consistently gave their readers two different experiences with the same book with the second read showing you how everything was logically and fairly laid out in front of you. So you couldn't have missed the obvious, but, more often than not, you did and a second read probably wants to make you kick yourself. That has been my experience with Carr's The Problem of the Green Capsule and Christie's Evil Under the Sun.

Remembering most of the solution, I could sit back to simultaneously admire and be astonished at how brazenly obvious everything was while she made it appear like a maze without an exit! The old bag lied through her teeth without uttering a single untrue word and I say that with the upmost affection. She even hinted at the solution before the murder was committed. What a woman!

So, technically, Evil Under the Sun is a small masterpiece and a shining example of the Golden Age detective story, but there are two tiny, almost minuscule, specks that need to be mentioned along with the praise. Poirot's observation that Arlena's murder is "a very slick crime" and the information he requests was a lucky guess, or an inspired piece of guesswork, as opposed to logical reasoning. Secondly, Christie indulged in some of her favorite themes and tropes, which is fine, but she has used them even better and in a much grander fashion in some of her better-known mystery novels. But having writing that down, I feel like I took a magnifying glass to Rembrandt's Night Watch to haunt for small imperfection.

As long-time readers of this blog know, or something you probably guessed from this review's opening, I like to explore the obscure, little-known nooks and crannies of the detective story, but, if you spend too much time there, you can forget why Carr and Christie towered above their contemporaries. The Problem of the Green Capsule and Evil Under the Sun were a much needed reminder that they earned their reputation as the absolute bests ever on merit and not merely for being popular fan favorites or selling copies like a money printer.

Murder Among Virgins (1965) by Ton Vervoort

My previous blog-posts were reviews of translations of two non-English detective novels, Mika Waltari's Kuka murhasi rouva Skrofin? (Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll?, 1939) and Seimaru Amagi's Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998), which annoy some of my readers as they tend to have availability issues – either being out-of-print or not on hand in English. So my apologies for rambling about three, non-English detective novels in a row, but wanted to do the hat-trick and end with a Dutch-language mystery. Rest assured, I'll return to the Anglo-American detective sphere in my next post. 

Peter Verstegen is a Dutch author, editor and translator who wrote half a dozen detective novels during the early 1960s under the name "Ton Vervoort."

I've recently discovered Vertegen began writing detectives at the time purely to make a living, which were published as Meulenhoff-pockets with a circulation of 12000 copies. But he only received a nickel per sold book. So he earned "1200 gulden if they sold out" or about a 1000 gulden if they didn't. That's roughly 3000 euros today.

Vervoort likely wasn't profitable enough for Verstegen to continue the series, which was a lost to the genre, because he wrote some authentic, plot-driven Dutch mystery novels penned in a deceivingly light and airy style – packed with all the potential to have been a serious rival to Appie Baantjer. Critic, poet and one-time mystery writer, C. Buddingh', said in the 1950s that if the detective story in the Netherlands wanted to have a personality of its own, it needs "to have a Dutch setting, populated with Dutch characters, where a murder committed by a Dutchman is solved." Vervoort checked all those boxes with novels like Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) and Moord onder de mantel der liefde (Murder Under the Mantle of Love, 1964), which also possessed many of qualities of his Anglo-American counterparts. Although not quite as good as some of the well-known American and British mystery novelists, but Vervoort unquestionable was a cut, or two, above most Dutch writers who tried their hands at the detective story.

The back cover of Moord onder maagden (Murder Among Virgins, 1965) says its Vervoort fourth novel, but this has to be a mistake as the publishing date and information online clearly places it as the fifth and final entry in the Floris Jansen series. Who's now a Chief Inspector of the Central Police in Amsterdam. 

Murder Among Virgins is Jansen's last recorded case, but appears only in the opening and closing chapters to begin and close the book on the "sordid history" surrounding a rich toothpaste magnate, Agnes Wels. A history that begins to slowly unravel on the morning after the Sinterklaasviering (St. Nicholas celebration), December 6, when Ton Vervoort reads in the paper about a "strange death" the previous night. Benno Haakman is a 20-year-old student who played Sinterklaas for the children of an orphanage in the Warmoesstraat, but collapsed while the children were singing a song and slipped into a diabetic coma – passing away later that night in hospital. There are, however, one or two aspects begging the attention of the police in the guise of the newly appointed Chief Inspector Floris Jansen. Vervoort gets a front row seat.

Benno had told the orphanage father he played Sinterklaas on behalf of a student-run Sinterklazencentrale, but they had stopped using the year prior. What happened to the man who played Zwarte Piet (Black Pete)? Why did they act so strangely? Doing "a sort of war dance with the sack and rod" and "pretending to take a little boy." Benno is the eccentric, overly sensitive son of the well-known toothpaste magnate, Agnes Wels, but it becomes "a brief investigation" when Jansen and Vervoort discover evidence of suicide. So they have to drop the case.

After only two chapters, Murder Among Virgins changes from a festive, seasonal December mystery into a travelogue with newlyweds Ton and Sannah Vervoort spending their honeymoon during the three-day carnival in Maastricht, Limburg. Same locality and carnival setting used by F. van Overvoorde's Moorden in Maastricht (Murders in Maastricht, 1937). Never imagined I would get an opportunity to reference that obscure mystery novel. Anyway, Vervoort has to be obnoxiously from Amsterdam by calling Maastricht a pleasant enough little town, but "it remains a fairly dozy place for Amsterdammers on honeymoon." But he becomes human again once the drinking and partying begins.

 

 

During their honeymoon they meet a "bilious antique dealer" at the hotel and a curious, old-fashioned, but kindly, priest who has a cabin in the wood, where he prays and meditate, but also enjoyed the brief excursion to the Sint Pietersberg – a "gigantic molehill of marl." A natural and historical labyrinth "where the first Christians hid from the heathens, later the heathens from the Christians, later the Protestants from the Catholics and then the Catholics from the Protestants." This part of the story is interspersed with entries from Sylvia Haakman's diary. Sylvia is the daughter of Agnes Wels and lives at an incredibly stern, Catholic convent boarding school in an old monastery, outside of Maastricht, but she's a rebellious teenager and constantly gets in trouble with the nuns. Ton and Sannah even get to witness one of the nuns hitting Sylvia during a walk in the woods.

I've to note here that, stylistically, Murder Among Virgins is very much a product of 1960s Dutch cultural revolution and secularization, which means that religion and the nuns are not cast in a very flattering light. Such as the morbidly obese Mother Superior who attempted to guilt Sylvia's mother in handing over 25000 gulden. The convent school becomes the scene of two "inexplicable murders" in the second-half of the novel.

Firstly, there's a cleverly done, wonderfully clued poisoning that came close to being a perfect murder and one of those things placing Vervoort among the top-ranked, second-tier mystery writers. Something not wholly unworthy of Agatha Christie or Gosho Aoyama. The second murder at the school surprised as it unexpectedly throw out a locked room mystery! A body is discovered in one of the toilets, locked from the inside, which is why everyone assumes it's the murderer who committed suicide, but don't expect too much from the routine trick. The locked room is only there to serve as a cheeky clue. But I didn't expect to come across one. So it was a nice surprise to add Vervoort's Murder Among Virgins to the growing list of Dutch locked room and impossible crime fiction.

Vervoort obviously tried to do something different with each novel. Murder Among Astrologists is an homage to the zanier, Alice in Wonderland-esque Ellery Queen mysteries with a dying message. Murder Under the Mantle of Love allowed a serial killer to escape from a closed-circle of suspects to wreak havoc on the invalids of the city. Murder Among Virgins mixes the seasonal and scholastic type of mystery novel with a travelogue, which were all written in a worryingly nonchalant, almost careless, style. A very light touch to the storytelling usually translates into a featherweight detective story with scant clueing, but, somehow, Vervoort always succeeded in pulling everything together in the last chapter – revealing an authentic, properly plotted and clued detective story. Murder Among Virgins is no exception in that regard.

There are, however, one or two flaws that places it slightly below Murder Among Astrologists and Murder Under the Mantle of Love. The murderer's motive is a huge gamble, which is acceptable enough (murder is a risky business anyway), but it turned the Sinterklaas murder into one big red herring. One that's not really fair. So don't pay too much attention to that murder. Having now read three of Vervoort's novels in short succession, I've begun to notice he has a preference for cloaking his murderers in a particular type of camouflage. And that made the murderer here standout with the locked room clue eventually confirming my suspicion.

So, overall, Murder Among Virgins is not the strongest entry in the short-lived Floris Jansen series, but certainly not a bad detective novel offering an ingenious poisoning-trick, a surprise impossible crime and dealt a generally fair hand to the reader. More importantly, it ensured Vervoort a permanent place among the troupe of mystery writers I affectionately refer to as my favorite second-stringers. Sadly, I only have to track down a copy of Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Stage Actors, 1963) to complete the series, unless some previously unpublished manuscripts (Moord onder detectives?) turn up somewhere. I can only hope.

Deadly Thunder (1998) by Seimaru Amagi

Earlier this year, I tracked down and reviewed an obscure, hard-to-get Japanese light novel in The New Kindaichi Files series, Operazakan – aratanaru satsujin (Opera House, the New Murders, 1994), written by the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective genre, Seimaru Amagi – who crafted a beautiful, perfectly executed theatrical (locked room) mystery. One of the better entries in the Kindaichi franchise demonstrating Amagi is a mystery writer who's firmly entrenched in the traditions of the shin honkaku school. 

A fact he already proved with another light novel, Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996), which is perhaps the first whodunit to use the internet in a meaningful way. Not to mention his original manga stories/anime adaptation of The Prison Prep School Murder Case, The Rosenkrauz Mansion Murders and The Legendary Vampire Murders. So I was eager to get my hands on the other two translations in the series, but those editions were intended for Japanese readers learning to read and speak English. Consequently, the well of secondhand copies in the West is practically empty and bone-dry.

Nevertheless, I managed to get hold of a copy of the sixth title in the series, Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998), which is the fourth and last novel to be translated and is a relatively minor story compared to the bigger, previously mentioned cases – centering on "a spontaneous crime" with an improvised trick. A trick turning an otherwise simple, straightforward murder into an impossible crime! It's not the no-footprints trick that makes Deadly Thunder somewhat standout, but how the plot combined everything from elements of cultural anthropology and entomology to geology and meteorology. All of these different aspects come together in the remote, unique setting of the story with the result reminding me of the regional mysteries by Todd Downing and Arthur W. Upfield. Two names not often associated with the Japanese shin honkaku detective story. 

Deadly Thunder has a standard enough opening with Hajime Kindaichi and Miyuki Nanase traveling to a tiny, remote village to visit a former classmate, Akie Asaki.

The land around Kumoba Village is "shaped like a valley or a basin," which makes it very hot during the summer with clouds forming above the surrounding mountains to produce heavy thunder and rain storms. In the past, the locals thought these thunderstorms were an act of the gods and appeased them with the three-day Thunder Festival. A long-standing, unbroken traditional of 300 years that has preserved to the present-day, but the rain and thunderstorms also gifted the village something special and unique. A kind of clay that's only found in Kumoba Village, which is washed down from the mountains.

Akie comes from a long line of potters whose "curious, translucent white" pots were presented to the Shogun during the Edo period and the ground their family home stands on has the best pottery clay, which is why it's surrounded by a large, foreboding wall with spikes on top – erected by previous generations "to protect the clay from robbers." She has to share the home with her stepmother and stepsister, Hazuki and Shigure Asaki, who Akie and her aunt, Haruko, consider intruders ("those two"). They also have a quasi-residential house guest staying at the annex, Kyoichi Muto, who's an entomologist. Apparently, the village is also rather unique in its "variety and number of cicadas."

So the setting is very well piece of miniature world-building as Amagi created a small, unique geographical area and populated it with a unique, somewhat isolated culture. A culture with its own history, religious practices and even architecture. Such as all the houses being low built, single-storied "to avoid being struck by lightening" with a tall tree in every garden to "serve as a lightening conductor." Another interesting aspect is how rich Deadly Thunder is in sound. Deadly Thunder is filled with the sound of falling rain, claps of thunder, chanting, beating of drums and "the incessant drone of cicadas," which all helped elevate a mostly routine detective story.

This kind of world-building is unfortunately a rarity in the detective genre, but Amagi has done it before, on a much larger scale, for Detective Academy Q with The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case. I co-reviewed the anime adaptation with Jim here.

Anyway, as the story moves towards the halfway mark, everyone begins to prepare for the first day of the annual Thunder Festival, but the celebration, or rather spectacle, ends with Hazuki discovering Muto's body in annex – bludgeoned to death. The body was covered in "hundreds, no thousands, of cicada shells," but even more inexplicable where the two sets of footprints going from the back of the house to the annex. A set of fresh, recently made prints belong to Hazuki, while the older, rain washed tracks were made by the well-worn, easy to identify sandals of the victim. So with the question of time and rain taking into consideration, the tracks turned the murder into a locked room mystery! 

Deadly Thunder has only one body and three suspects, which has been done before in the series (e.g. The Blood Pool Hall Murder), but not very often and the plot really needed a good locked room-trick to give the plot some weight. Thankfully, the locked room-trick delivered as it did something new with the no-footprints scenario, but with all the clues in place necessary to arrive at (nearly) the same conclusion as Kindaichi. Why the body was covered in cicada shells was an inspired piece of plotting functioning as both a clue and a red herring.

The reader has an easier time putting all the pieces together than Kindaichi as he has to deal with a local policeman, Detective Akai, who's more annoyed than impressed by the grandson of "the master detective Kosuke Kindaichi." Even if he "solved several murder cases and mysteries that the police couldn't solve." Detective Akai only sees an ordinary high school student who speaks to adults like they were taking classes together. Kindaichi has to learn and show a little humility before getting an opportunity to prove himself to Detective Akai. One of those many small touches that made the story shine.

There is, however, a minor problem with the solution. Amagi added a last-minute twist that gave the story an ending as black as the ink with which it was printed, but not a fair surprise as it's impossible to anticipate the motivation behind the act. A smudge on an otherwise very well written, competently plotted detective story.

That being said, the good definitely outweighed the bad with a simple, but good, locked room-trick and a splendid, vividly realized setting, which told its story in less than a 130 pages with full-length illustrations. The short length proved to be an asset as it enlarged all its strong points and prevented the story from overstaying its welcome by dwelling on its weaknesses. So, yeah, a perfect detective story to nip at during a lazy summer afternoon.

Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll? (1939) by Mika Waltari

Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) has a little-known, often overlooked section tucked away in the end papers, "Foreign-Language Books," which lists a small selection of French, German and Swedish titles alongside a lonesome Finish novel – penned by mainstream novelist and translator, Mika Waltari. Kuka murhasi rouva Skrofin? (Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll?, 1939) introduced Waltari's series-detective, Brigadier Frans J. Palmu, who appeared in three detective novels that have never been translated into English. 

There is, however, an obscure, 1960s Dutch translation of Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll? and a copy of Wie vermoordde mevrouw Kroll? finally came my way. Today's post is going to be a poorly written, pan-European review of the Dutch translation of the Swedish edition of a Finnish detective novel in English. So please be patient, my Anglo-American friends. 

Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll? opens at a shabby, rundown apartment building owned by a strictly religious and wealthy, but stingy, widow, Mrs. Alma Kroll – who lived on the top floor. One morning, the tenants notices "an unpleasant smell of gas" on the staircase and the postman is greeted by a strong, gassy smell when he lifted the flap of Mrs. Kroll's mail-slot. Everything remained deadly quiet inside. So they call in the police to break open the door and discover the bodies of "the old miser" and her dog, which appears to have been an accidental gas-poisoning. A kind of accident that was only too common in those days.

Brigadier Frans J. Palmu is a rough edged, old-school policeman with a much younger, university educated assistant, Toivo Virta, who's completely up-to-date with the scientific literature on criminology and criminal psychology. Virta also doubles as the story's narrator and they beautifully play off each other.

While Virta is the more scientifically grounded of the two, he wishes his superior had "a little bit of imagination," but Palmu tells him if he had any imagination he would have it "surgically removed or resign." Palmu more than once has to reprimand him not to indulge in romanticism, but respects his intelligence with the tendency to take credit for his ideas. So you can compare their partnership to Christopher Bush's Ludovic Travers and Superintendent George Wharton.

Palmu concludes that the death of Mrs. Kroll was not an accidental gas-poisoning, but a calculated, carefully-staged murder. A very "special murder" that's "committed once every ten years." However, the murderer made a few costly mistakes. Firstly, the dog had its neck savagely broken and the murderer had tried to put the body in a natural position on its pillow. Secondly, two-hundred thousand Finnish marks in cash is missing and someone may have tampered with Mrs. Kroll's sleeping pills, but Palmu's inspection also revealed that the murder is an impossible crime in appearance only – which is why I didn't use the "locked room mystery" tag. I can see how it ended up in Adey's Locked Room Murders, but you'll be a little disappointed, if you expect to find one. What can I say? Goddamn Scandinavians!

So the plot becomes primarily concerned with the who-and why with a closed-circle of suspects and motives that were thrown in disarray by a last-minute testament. Mrs. Kroll was a member of the Congregation of Bethlehem, a Protestant sect, who were set to inherit a sizable chunk of her fortune to build a church. But she found out something unsavory about their leader, Pastor Mustapäa. So she immediately changed her testament, which now completely favored her stepdaughter and nephew. Mrs. Kroll hoped to unite them in marriage, but Kirsti Kroll and Karl Lankela had incompatible personalities who don't really like each other. There's also Mrs. Kroll's underpaid, downtrodden lawyer, Mr. Lanne, to consider and Lankela's close friend and surrealistic painter, Kurt Kuurna, to scrutinize.

Palmu and Vitra have to do lot of talking and scraping to get a clear story and gather all of the "tangible clues" they can find, which comprises of a matchstick, shoe prints, drops of blood and a defective lock on a courtyard gate. I know this sounds like Waltari was dragging-the-marshes with a pinch of humdrum detection, but Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll? is a pleasantly told, leisurely paced detective story, which somehow worked really well here. There was some nicely done scenes like an enthusiastic, 15-year-old boy showing Palmu how school boys entered the courtyard by manipulating the defective lock. A discovery that eliminated another obstacle for both the murderer and the detectives.

So you gentle drift towards the solution with perhaps the biggest surprise being tucked away at the end of the penultimate chapter, which ends with a full-blown, Ellery Queen-style "Challenge to the Reader" – announcing that "all the facts are now in the hands of the reader." Why not add a pinch of Americanism? This review is already an international affair. I wasn't able to answer every single question, but did, sort of, figured out the murderer's identity and motive. 

Who Murdered Mrs. Kroll strongly reminded me of C. Buddingh's Vrijwel op slag (Almost Instantly, 1953), a Dutch detective novel, which both attempted to create homegrown strain of the Anglo-American detective story. At the time, they locally were a big fish in a small pond, but, compared to those Anglo-American counterparts, they're nothing more than good, well-intended, second-tier detective novels. So nice to have and read, if they happen to come your way, but nothing to lose sleep over if they never do. 

A note for the curious: John Pugmire and Brian Skupin's mega locked room and impossible crime anthology, The Realm of the Impossible (2017), has a two-page extract from a Finnish novel, Aleksis Kivi's Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers, 1870), discussing and solving a fascinating and original no-footprints mystery.

Murder and the Married Virgin (1944) by Brett Halliday

Last time, I reviewed a juvenile detective novel by Enid Blyton, The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat (1944), that confronted the Find-Outers with the apparently impossible theft of the titular, prize-winning Siamese cat and gave me the idea to pick the subject of today's review as my next read – as it's an interesting contrast to Blyton's children's detective fiction. A hardboiled, tough-guy 1944 locked room mystery obviously not intended to be read by 8-12 year old's. 

"Brett Halliday" was the pseudonym of an American writer, Davis Dresser, who was married to the well-known mystery novelist Helen McCloy and together they ran a literary agency called Halliday and McCloy. They also founded the Torquil Publishing Company, but Halliday is best-known as the creator and first writer of the Michael "Mike" Shayne series. A hardboiled counterpart to Ellery Queen complete with different series-periods (Miami and New Orleans), ghost writers and a short fiction magazine (Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine).

Mike Shayne is seen by knowledgeable, better informed readers as "one of the most popular private detectives ever," whose cases are "generally very well plotted and pleasantly complex," but the earlier books have been called "surprisingly traditional" in nature – something that doesn't really surprise me anymore. The tough-guy private eye school is supposed to be the antithesis to my beloved, plot-driven detective stories of ratiocination, which is not entirely untrue. But my experience is that a lot of them were excellent plotters and either tried their hands at the locked room mystery or even made it a specialty. Just look under the "Private Eyes" tag. 

Murder and the Married Virgin (1944) is the tenth novel in the Mike Shayne and Kate, of Cross Examining Crime, picked it as one of her recommendations to locked room enthusiasts based on the reviews in The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-47 (2001-09). Anthony Boucher praised the "clever locked-room murder method" and "typical Halliday hard-paced action." So let's see what this series is all about. 

Murder and the Married Virgin takes place shortly after Shayne moved from Miami to New Orleans and setup shop in two-room suite, on the fourth floor of the International Building, with a brand new secretary, Lucy Hamilton – who apparently played a role in a previous novel. From what I gathered, Lucy is the Nikki Porter of the series, but with more character consistency. Anyway, Shayne gets two different cases on his desk that conveniently took place under the roof of the same household.

Firstly, a Mr. Teton, of Mutual Indemnity, hires Shayne to recover an emerald necklace that had been insured for $125000, but, in the present gem-market, "the necklace would easily bring two hundred thousand." The necklace, belonging to a Mrs. Lomax, was presumed stolen during a burglary and was supposed to be in the bedroom safe, which the burglar didn't touch. That's why nobody missed the necklace until the day their maid committed suicide in her locked, third-floor bedroom. Katrin Moe was a Norwegian immigrant engaged to be married to a young army lieutenant, Ted Drinkley, who, dazed and broken down, turns to Shayne. He wants to know why she committed suicide the day before their marriage. Or was she perhaps murdered? And how?

Shayne remarks that "Philo Vance might be able to sort out the truth from the lies, but I'll be damned if I can." However, he does a decent job in tangling with the locked room problem with no less than two false-solutions. Shayne spots the possibility of an old-dodge and pieces together a technical, but not uninspired, false-solution which accounts for both the locked door and why Katrin appeared to welcome death with "outflung arms and a smile." The actual locked room-trick achieves the same effect, but is a bit cruder in execution and not as fairly clued. Regardless, these locked room bits and pieces were, too me, the highlight of the story.

But in every other regard, Murder and the Married Virgin is a seedy, hardboiled private-eye novel and Shayne has to through the whole shebang to tie the stolen necklace to an impossible murder. There's the dysfunctional Lomax family made up of "an old man married to a wife with young ideas" with a stone-cold, perpetual bored daughter, a wannabee playboy son and a chauffeur with movie-star looks – not to mention a dead maid. He also has to tangle with a troublesome dame, a shady club owner and armed torpedoes, which comes with the customary whack to the back of the head and "a murder frame" around his neck.

Shayne has to do a lot of talking, thinking and downright dirty work to get himself out of a very tight spot. Such paying for "witnesses" to place a certain someone at the scene of a murder, which disgusts Lucy to the point where she's ready to walk out on Shayne ("...I thought you were decent"). Funnily enough, I picked Murder and the Married Virgin as a simple contrast to a children's (locked room) mystery novel from the same year, but both stories have their detectives seriously tampering with evidence. One of them was done out of mischievous, child-like innocence, while the other was the result of adult cynicism in a dog-eat-dog world ("scruples are something the boys write about in detective novels"). So incredibly different, and yet, I can't help but see a family resemblance.

My sole complaint is that the ending felt a little like fiddling with a combination lock, trying different combinations with the known numbers, but other than that, it's a solid, fast-paced private eye novel and a notable example of the hardboiled locked room mystery. So the other three Halliday novels on my big pile will be moved up a few places.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat (1944) by Enid Blyton

So far, I've grossly neglected the juvenile detective story in 2021 with my review of Bruce Campbell's The Mystery of the Vanishing Mystery (1956) dating back to October, 2020, but a certain someone acted as a constant reminder to return to this largely unexplored nook of the genre – particularly to the surprisingly plot-conscious Enid Blyton. The Rat-a-Tat Mystery (1956) was my previous exposure to Blyton and it was disappointing, but it didn't erase the rigorous plotting, clueing and clever use of red herrings in The Mystery of the Invisible Thief (1950). The Rilloby Fair Mystery (1950) added a new angle to an age-old locked room-trick. Why not return to Blyton with another one of her locked room mysteries that has received some praise from her resident fanboy. 

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat (1944) is the second novel in The Five Find-Outers and Dog series and takes place at the beginning of a long, nine-week summer holiday. A holiday reuniting Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip, Bets and Fatty's free spirited dog, Buster, who solved The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage (1943) over the Easter holiday. So they wish there will be another mystery for them to solve during the summer, but everything appears to be quiet and peaceful in the Peterswood.

Only thing of interest that has lately happened is Lady Candling moving into the house next door to Pit and Bets. While their new neighbor doesn't have any children their age, Lady Candling has brought along her prize-winning collection of Siamese cats, who have a cat-house in garden, where they strike up a friendship with the gardener's boy, Luke – a 15-year-old lad who can hardly read or write. Luke is "terribly clever with his hands," carving wooden animals and making twig-whistles, as well as knowing everything about the birds in the countryside. And that's more than enough for the Five Find-Outers! All they have to do is watch out for the head-gardener, "horrid Mr. Tupping," who's one of the vilest creatures to ever wander onto the pages of a children's story. More on that in a moment.

The Five Find-Outers finally get "a real, proper mystery" when the cream of Lady Candling's prize-winning cats, named Dark Queen, disappears from her cage in the cat-house, but the Monkey's Paw is at work as their wish comes at a prize. Dark Queen was stolen between four and five o'clock, which means that only Luke could have stolen the cat. At the time, Luke was working around the cat-house and swore nobody else had been anywhere near it.

Constable Goon is more than willing to go along with Mr. Tuppering to apprehend Luke as the cat-napper, as nobody else could have possibly done it, but The Five Find-Outers believe their new friend "would never, never do a thing like that." So they recklessly plunge themselves headfirst into another rabbit hole with Buster leading the charge.

A notable highlight of their detective efforts is when they investigates the cat-house, ahead of Goon, where they find an incriminating clue and conclude it must have been planted to cast suspicion on Luke. So they nick the evidence, empty their pockets and litter the cage with false-clues like peppermint drops, a shoe lace, a ribbon, a button and cigar stubs – which "surprised and puzzled" Goon to no end. An act so legally questionable that it would make Perry Mason beam with pride at the next generation of detectives. Another thing I thought was really well done is that the disappearance act is repeated a second time, like a script, under practically identical circumstances. Once again, the only person present at the time was Luke. Even the Find-Outers begin to wish "everything wasn't so dreadfully puzzling."

Blyton showed her credentials as a mystery writers by playing a fair hand, although not quite as brilliantly as in The Mystery of the Invisible Thief, but the given clues should give the story's intended audience a shot at putting all the pieces together themselves. However, it won't fool an adult reader for even a minute and a jaded mystery reader can figure out the locked room-trick before it happens. But there was still much to admire about the plot. 

Blyton used the locked room trope like an expert as it served two very specific purposes (ROT13): gb tvir gur png-anccre na hafunxnoyr nyvov and unaqvat gur cbyvpr n ernql-znqr fhfcrpg, which Blyton handily jenccrq hc naq cerfragrq nf n ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel. Something I can appreciate as a snobbery prone connoisseur of puzzle plots and locked room mysteries. While the whole thing is as clear as day to adult readers, it was amusing to see how Blyton misdirected her young readers using adult authority (gur haoernxnoyr nyvov) and the general inexperience of the Find-Outers. Such as not immediately understanding the clue they smelled in the cat-house, but never in a condescending or superior way. Blyton respected both her characters and readers. A fact perhaps better reflected in the dark, realistic undertone of the series.

Firstly, in this story, there's that "rude, bad-tempered old man," Tupping, who regularly abuses Luke verbally and boxes his ears, but he also tore apart Bets strawberry garden in a rage. Bets had been given a few strawberry runners from his garden ("he really thought it was his garden, and not Lady Candling's") and had to get even with an 8-year-old girl. Luke also lives in constant fear that his abusive stepfather will belt him "black and blue," if he finds out he's suspect or loses his job. Something else that's always hovering in the background is the parental neglect of Frederick "Fatty" Trotteville as Larry remarks in passing to him "Your mother and father don't bother about you much, do they?" as "you seem to go home or go out just whenever you like," which is very different from the household of the brother and sister of the group, Pip and Bets – whose parents have a bed-time bell to let them know its time to brush their teeth. So these moments drift over the blue, sunny skies of this series like dark, wispy clouds that occasionally intrude on the lull of the lazy, endless summer holiday as brief reminders of their impending adolescence and coming adulthood. However, it's still something far away on the horizon and there's nothing that will impede on the summer-time mystery adventure!

So, yeah, The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat is another top-notch (locked room) detective story and stands closer, quality-wise, to what made The Mystery of the Invisible Thief such a pleasant and welcome surprise. So, hopefully, there's more where those two came from.

Murder Under the Mantle of Love (1964) by Ton Vervoort

Three months ago, I reviewed Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) by "Ton Vervoort," a penname of Peter Verstegen, who's (or was?) a Dutch author, editor and translator partial to astrology, chess and detective fiction – penning six detective novels himself during the 1960s. Murder Among Astrologists displayed the influence of S.S. van Dine and Ellery Queen on Vervoort's work complete with weird architecture and a dying message. 

Aligning your work with the Van Dine-Queen School is a high bar to clear, especially for a Dutch mystery writer in the '60s, but Vervoort cunningly pulled it off by under promising and over delivering on the plot. An all too rare quality in the Dutch-language detective story and an invitation to return sooner rather than later. So moved another one of his novels to the top of the big pile. 

Moord onder de mantel der liefde (Murder Under the Mantle of Love, 1964) is the fourth title in the Inspector Floris Jansen series and gives the reader a modern take on the Golden Age serial killer story. A very odd one at that, but a genuine whodunit pull a la Agatha Christie. But despite the Anglo-American touches, it's also one of the most stereotypical Dutch detective novels I've ever come across. 

Murder Under the Mantle of Love begins as a regular detective story with the narrator, Ton Vervoort, perusing the newspaper and reading about the brutal murder of "the well-known doctor, botanist and sinologist," Dr. Ed Hinke – who had his neck broken in his private study. Dr. Hinke had fallen victim to a "terrible disease," polio, which left him partial paralyzed and forced him to retire. Not merely from his medical practice and public life, but from his family as well. Only one with constant, unfettered access to the doctor is his live-in nurse, Anjo Collet. Vervoort reads that the investigation has been placed in the capable hands of Inspector Floris Jansen, of the Amsterdam police, who's an old friend of his. So it takes one phone call to secure a front row seat as his "secretary."

A practice that's not particularly popular with his colleagues and the story notes that there was "a strong animosity" against Jansen's "way of life and methods." But he can get away with it due to his "independent position" at headquarters.

Vervoort follows Jansen to Dr. Hinke's seventeenth century grachtenpand (canal house), on the Keizersgracht, where he lived with all of his immediately relatives, but they're not an ordinary family. Dr. Hinke's oldest son, Hans, is an interior decorator and a pedantic snob with an inferiority complex and posses "a stiff dose of jealousy" towards his younger brother, Maarten. A sensual, womanizing student of medicine with all the wrong friends and an abrasively liberal attitude towards euthanasia ("Hitler discredited the killing of the terminally ill and insane"), which all infuriated their sister, Daphne. She's a geologist and secular puritan who believed that "the morals of the Dutch were in a pitiful state" and passionately disapproved of her brother's openly flaunting his frivolous love life. Something else she hated is having to share the third-floor with her father's secret, long-lost Dutch-Indonesian wife, Topsy, who thought Dr. Hinke had died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp – until she came to the Netherlands. Topsy came to the house a month before the murder and she brought along the 21-year-old son Dr. Hinke had never seen, Tjallie. Lastly, there's Tanny Hinke, Hans' wife, who has a very expensive and luxurious taste and it was costing her husband a pretty penny. This really angered his father. Dr. Hinke believed "a woman should be grateful for every penny awarded to her" and getting into debt to finance her lavish lifestyle was ridiculous. And even offered to pay for the divorce.

So they're practically a happy, tightly-knit and stable household, but the biggest discovery Jansen makes is that Dr. Hinke was addicted to smoking opium. Not only was Dr. Hinke smoking three, or more, pipes a day, he was growing poppies right next to the orchids in his locked attic. We have a victim who made drugs in his attic and suspects who are the flesh-and-blood incarnation of Dutch bluntness. Yes, a prostitute briefly appears as a witness during second-half of the story. I told you this was an unmistakably, bordering on stereotypical, post-war Dutch detective novel.

The murder of Dr. Hinke can be summed up as a traditional whodunit with a new coat of paint to reflect the changing times, but, around the halfway mark, the whole case is turned upside down and inside out.

Nurse Anjo confides in Jansen that she often has "predictive dreams" and had a dream-like prophecy about Dr. Hinke's murder. Before the murder, she dreamed that her employer was killed with a hammer, which is not exactly what happened, but pretty close and she continues to have strange, predictive dreams throughout the second-half of the story – revealing an active serial killer in Amsterdam! A killer preying on invalids who had become embittered with "nothing more to expect from life." These serial murders take the police out of the original crime scene and scatter them across the city which, especially to non-Dutch readers, can come across as a sight-seeing tour of Amsterdam.

A gallery attendant at the Rijksmuseum, who lost all his fingers in an accident with a cutting machine, unexpectedly drops dead among the museum visitors. An invalid with a cigarette-and-candy cart on the boisterous, rowdy Zeedijk is found dead by a window prostitute and a third dream has the police scouring all the cafes in the city for a man with a seeing-eye dog. All of them are poisoned with an uncommon, difficult to trace substance.

So the story moves away from a modern whodunit with a closed-circle of suspects to parapsychological manhunt for not only a serial killer, but the prospective victims with the last murder being somewhat of a tragedy. Just like with Murder Among Astrologists, I began to wonder how Vervoort was going to tie everything together satisfactory as his loose storytelling and small page-count didn't quite promise a neo-Golden Age detective story. What seemed to make the most sense was that Dr. Hinke had, somehow, distributed the poison and someone killed him to put a stop to it, which turned out to be wrong, but it did put me on the right track. Vervoort ended up doing something completely different with the motive, how the murders were carried out and kind of liked how he spun a complications out of inconvenient alibis, accidental clues and vanishing red herrings – some being better and clearer than others. But, on a whole, it made for a good and unusual Dutch detective story.

Only thing that can be said against Murder Under the Mantle of Love is the same as about Murder Among Astrologists. Vervoort had some good and clever ideas, some were even inspired, but he had too light a style, or touch, to utilize them to their full potential. So it doesn't fully measure up to its Anglo-American counterparts.

Nonetheless, it was quite impressive that Vervoort managed to tell two different types of detective stories in his light style with a small page-count, but still managed to link them together with a logical, inevitable solution that didn't feel like a letdown. Vervoort evidently knew what makes a plot tick and wish he had continued writing detective novels, because half a dozen is hardly enough to keep me satisfied. I need more Dutch detective writers like Vervoort!

So his remaining detective novels, Moord onder toneelspelers (Murder Among Stage Actors, 1963), Moord onder maagden (Murder Among Virgins, 1965) and Moord op toernee (Murder on Tour, 1965), have been bumped to the top of my wishlist. I'm also looking into the few short stories he wrote. Such as "Burleske aan de galg" ("Burlesque on the Gallows," 1965) and "Het alibi" ("The Alibi," 1968). Wordt vervolgd!

Murder at Government House (1937) by Elspeth Huxley

Elspeth Huxley was a British conservationist and renowned author of biographies, memories and fiction about Africa, whose most well-known work is the semi-autobiographical The Flame Trees of Tikha (1959), but among her forty-some books are a handful of detective novels – three starring her series-detective, Superintendent Vachell. Murder on Safari (1938) is perhaps Huxley's best remembered mystery and prompted one critic to declare her "a dangerous rival to Agatha Christie." Regrettably, Huxley's modest contribution to the detective story, as the Arthur W. Upfield of Africa, has been largely forgotten today. 

Huxley wrote the three Vachell mysteries during a five-year world tour to avoid playing shuffleboard on the ocean voyages and returned to the genre two decades later with two standalone novels, The Merry Hippo (1963) and A Man from Nowhere (1964). But it was her trio of exotic, 1930s mysteries that cinched Huxley's place in the annals of crime fiction. 

Murder at Government House (1937) marked Huxley's debut as a mystery novelist and takes place in the British colony of Chania, Africa, where Sir Malcolm McLeod acted as the King's representative.

Sir Malcolm came into the colonial service from the outside and the Colonial Office took "a rare gamble" by offering him the Governorship of British Somaliland, but he had introduced "more reforms and innovations" there than during its entire existence as part of the Colonial Empire, which had earned him the appointment to Chania – a senior Governorship. And he took a hands-on approach to governing the colony. One of his first actions was reviving a long, vaguely discussed idea of federating Chania with a neighboring Protectorate to the north, Totseland. Something that is seen as a first step towards "welding into one confederacy the territories under British rule lying between the Zambesi and the headwaters of the Nile." A plan not entirely without obstacles or opposition.

The story opens with a Government House dinner-party in honor of Sir Bertrand Flower, the Governor of Totseland, which preceded their discussion merging the two countries into one territory. A huge stumbling block is the amalgamation of the two railways as both territories believe the neighbors railway is "nothing but a collection of scrap-iron." However, the meeting is prevented when murder rears its ugly head.

Sir Malcolm is found strangled to death in his private office and his murder poses something of a locked room problem. Both windows were closed and locked with catches that can only be worked from the inside. The door to the Governor's office was guarded "day and night" by a sentry and the other two exits were under observation. This is just one of the many problems facing the Canadian-born Superintendent Vachell.

First and foremost, there's a whole slew of potential suspects hovering around Goverment House. Maisie is "the girl-wife" of the Director of Education, Mr. Watson, who's "principal source of scandal" and the mistress of Sir Malcolm – everyone held their breath to see what action the injured husband was going to take. Victor Moon is the Secretary for Native Affairs and he's not a great admirer of his immediate senior, Mr. Pallett, who's the Colonial Secretary and now Acting Governor. But despite his long, successful career, Vachell discovers Pallett is unable to stand up to open opposition or bullying. Donovan Popple is a settler, farmer and trader with a twenty-five year history in Chania and has called Sir Malcolm a "damn fool, pocket Mussolini," which makes him a primary suspect when his thumbprint is found at the crime scene. Mr. Jeudwine is the slippery private secretary of Government House who gives "the impression of dwelling apart with thoughts profounder than those of ordinary men." That's not all as "too many darned people in this murder," but there are also outside forces Vachell has to take into consideration.

Vachell is told about "one of these strange secret societies that periodically crop up among natives," the League of the Plaindwellers, who have an ax to grind with the British government over the Wabenda witchcraft case. Someone else tells him there's a Somalian organization, Black Aisa, who have personal motive dating back to Sir Malcolm's governorship of British Somaliland. So, luckily, Vachell finds an old friend and anthropologist, Olivia Brandeis, staying at Government House to help him sort out the whole mess. One reviewer noted on the GADwiki that Brandeis comes across as a young incarnation of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley. I kind of can see that comparison, especially during the opening chapter.

Their joined-investigation presents a faded, but fascinating, snapshot of a time and place now long-gone, which were nearly all tightly-woven into the fabric of the story and not merely confined to the realm of colonial politics of Goverment House – touching everything from settlers to the natives. Such as the Timbergrowers' Association wanting to know why the blazes they didn't use local hardwood for the governor's coffin or the less pleasant sideline in the way local natives deal with curses, witchcraft and witches in general, which leads to a gruesome, unavenged murder of a 10-year-old girl. A lot less darker is that magical, almost surrealistic scene when Olivia hits upon a secret meeting of the Plaindweller League and "felt as if she were another Alice translated into an African wonderland."

So here you have why Huxley was to Africa what Upfield was to the Australian outback as she wrote a detective story that could not have taken place anywhere else except in 1930s colonial Africa. Murder at Government House had everything to turn it into a minor classic of the so-called regional mystery, but the plot is frustratingly uneven and not entirely fair.

Huxley held back a lot from the reader and, in particular, the motive is something you can only guess at while an important clue, or hint, regarding the how was obliterated by the passage of time. However, if you've done your homework (i.e. read detective stories), you should be able to put one and together to figure out the murderer's identity. There were two aspects about the murder that made this character suspiciously standout, but you can't figure out how, exactly, it was done as those clues were not available. Don't expect too much from the locked room-angle. The whole locked room setup was used for something completely different, which could have worked beautifully with more clues as the trick was quite clever.

So, purely as a detective story, Murder at Goverment House was pretty much the same as my recent experience with Nat Lombard's Murder's a Swine (1943). A detective story that was better written than plotted with a ton of historical interest that could not have taken place anywhere else except in that specific time and place. This makes it difficult to recommend. 

Murder at Government House was not a bad read at all that actually made good use of the story's setting and enjoyed my time with it. The problem is that it's, plot-wise, a sloppy, poorly worked-out detective story that could have used an editor to smooth over the plot. Normally, a poor and sloppy plot is enough to sink a detective story for me, but here, the good ever-so slightly outweighed the bad.