The Finishing Stroke (1958) by Ellery Queen

The mystery writing cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, better known by their shared penname of "Ellery Queen," likely intended The Finishing Stroke (1958) to be their last Ellery Queen novel and designed a plot befitting a farewell performance to the American detective – an ambitious plot covering a period of fifty-two years. Fittingly, for this time of year, the story is written around a parody of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." So why not give it a second look now that nearly all memories of the story have faded from my memory. 

The Finishing Stroke begins on January, 1905, when publisher John Sebastian and his pregnant wife, Claire, were driving from New York to Rye in "a blizzard and smashed their car up near Mount Kidron." Fortunately, they crashed near a little house where Dr. Cornelius Hall lives, but, as a result of the accident, Claire went into premature labor and gave birth to twins. She survived delivering the first baby, but not the second. A wounded and shocked John denounced his second son on the spot ("the little monster killed my wife"), which is rather fortunate for Dr. Hall and his wife. They never had a child and that has remained a source of unhappiness to them.

John Sebastian agreed and promises to setup a trust fund, but dies of an untreated head injury less than a week later. He only acknowledged one son, John Sebastian Jr, who's to inherit his entire, multi-million dollar estate on his twenty-fifth birthday and is under the guardianship of his father business partner and friend, Arthur B. Craig. So nobody, except the Halls, knew there were two sons and they had a reason to keep quiet. This was also the year Ellery Queen was born.

Twenty-five years later, Ellery took his first, tentative steps as one of those meddlesome amateur detectives when helped his father navigate "the labyrinth of the Monte Field case" and wrote down the case in a bestselling novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) – reviews were, on a whole, nourishing. Only taking offense to the being called "a philovancish bookworm" and accused of being merely competent. But, on a whole, things were looking bright for the young author and sleuth. So he was going up in the world when he accepted an invitation to attend a Christmas and New Years house party in Alderwood, New York, culminating in a birthday bash.

Young John Sebastian is now "a dilettante poet of great charm" and an acquaintance of Ellery whose engaged to a fashionably textile designer, Rusty Brown, whose creations "were beginning to be mentioned in The New Yorker's 'The Talk of the Town''and sought out by Park Avenue." In two weeks time, John turns twenty-five and comes into his full inheritance as well as seeing his first book of verse published. So things are looking very bright for everyone and the reason why he's invited a dozen guests to the home of his guardian to celebrate the season. John promises a huge surprise at the end of the twelve-day holiday.

Arthur Craig is the host of the party and not only had he to be a father-figure to the young poet, but also to his orphaned niece, Ellen Craig, who's like a sister to John. Mrs. Olivette Brown is John's future mother-in-law who's a devotee of astrology and an amateur medium. Valentina Warren is a theatrical actress whose "great crusade" is to get to Hollywood to became a famous movie star. Marius Carlo is a composer with an "adoring clique of Greenwich Village poets, artists and musicians who had attached themselves to him like a fungus," but earned a living playing in Walter Damrosch's symphony orchestra "heard coast-to-coast each Saturday night at nine over NBC." Dr. Sam Dark has been the family doctor ever since he came to Alderwood and Roland Payn. Dan Z. Freeman, of The House of Freeman, is Ellery and John's publisher. Lastly, Reverend Mr. Andrew Gardiner, recently retired from his Episcopal rectorate in New York, who's a friend of the Browns. And, of course, Ellery Queen.

So an interesting cast of characters to put together for a fortnight in a large, rambling country house during the holidays and mysterious, inexplicable things begin to happen almost immediately.

On a snowy, Christmas morning, the house awakens to discover the packages under the Christmas tree missing, but, mere moments later, a Santa Claus appears in the hallway with the presents and begins "distributing the gay little packages with wordless gusto" – before vanishing without a trace. The spotless, unmarked snow anywhere near the house proved nobody could have left the place, but a search didn't turn up a thirteenth house guest. Surprisingly, the story is full with these quasi-impossible situations and near locked room situations. More interestingly, the nature of presents reveals to Ellery that all twelve of them were born under different signs of the zodiac. So here we have "twelve people in the party, twelve days and nights of Christmas, and now a vanishing Santa Claus who distributes twelve signs of the zodiac," but things get much stranger and more incomprehensible.

During those twelve days, on each of those twelve days, a neatly wrapped package addressed to John Sebastian is found in the house. Every package has a card attached to it with a parody on the carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and some have weird doodles on the back, which serve as a kind of dying message. But the content of the packages would continue to puzzle Ellery for more than a quarter of a century. And, to complete the mystery, the body of an elderly man turns up on the library rug with a dagger in his back. Nobody knows who the man is or how he got into the house and there are no identifying marks. So the police officially confines the party to the house pending the investigation.

So an intriguing, intricately-presented problem, but, before getting to the plot, it should be mentioned The Finishing Stroke can be counted as an early example of the historical mystery with the majority of the story taking place in the last week of 1929 and the first week of 1930 – concluding nearly three decades later in 1957. There are references throughout the story to what happened in the world during that period. They listen on the radio to Chris 'Red' Cagle, the Cadets' great All-American halfback, playing his last college game. They discuss the Hoover administration, mock New York's Mayor Jimmy Walker being sworn in "for his second hilarious term" and talk international politics ("the growing power of the Dutchman") and other subjects of the time ("the new I B M calculator"). Naturally, there are plenty of references to "the ravages of Prohibition" and Black Thursday, but Ellery also reads Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and How Like a God (1929) by "someone named Rex Stout." These historical crumbs served their purpose by placing the setting in that particular period in time, but let the reader be warned. Not everything is period dressing!

But what about the plot, you ask? That's an entirely different kettle of fish. The Finishing Stroke is more interesting in what it tried to do than how it was done. 

The Finishing Stroke is, technically speaking, a fair play detective story, but the clueing is too esoteric and the red herrings too rich to give average reader a fair shot to arrive at the same conclusion as Ellery. You can spot the murderer by figuring out the motive, but deciphering the secret of the Christmas packages is beyond most readers. Not everything is explained. What about the locked bedroom door and where were the packages hidden? A bit sloppy compared with the methodical plotting of the 1930s EQ novels. However, the central idea behind the whole plot was devilish clever and possibly unique at the time as (ROT13) gur zheqrere unq ernq Ryyrel'f obbx naq qrfvtarq n cyna pnyphyngrq gb znavchyngr naq zvfyrnq uvz. Something that had, to my knowledge, not been done before. I think our mystery writing cousins deserve praise for how they handled one of the biggest no-noes of the detective story. 

Father Ronald A. Knox stated in his "Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929) that "twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them." Not only was the reader duly prepared for the presence of a twin brother, which took away the problem of how John Sebastian could be in two places at the same time, but Queen somehow succeeded to get several extremely ingenious twists out of that lengthy prologue. If you're going to use twins in a detective story, this is how its done! But the end result is a very uneven, atypically EQ novel.

Ellery Queen is often called the embodiment of the American detective story, but this intended last outing strangely reminded me of two novels by a highly unorthodox, British mystery writer, Gladys Mitchell – who's as different from EQ as a witch is to a mathematician. Mitchell's The Echoing Stranger (1952) is another detective novel that knew how to use spotty twins, but The Finishing Stroke reminded me the most of her own trip down memory lane. Late, Late in the Evening (1976) is, like The Finishing Stroke, a nostalgic trip back to the 1920s. Both stories almost read like the detective story itself is reminiscing about happier days. And the uneven plotting did very little to dispel that impression. 

The Finishing Stroke is not the best or fairest of the Ellery Queen novels, but the plot toyed with some interesting, even original, concepts and ideas to tell a detective story. Despite some of its shortcomings, the story of a cocky, know-it-all Ellery ("I must have been insufferable") failing to solve the case until he matured into middle age is fascinating and would have made a fitting conclusion to both the character and series. So not to be skipped by true EQ fans.

Notes for the curious: out of simple, historical curiosity, I looked up the football player (Chris Cagle) and discovered he was born in 1905 and died the day after Christmas, 1942. The body on the library rug in the story is discovered on December 26. A coincidence or done by design? And why? Lastly, The Finishing Stroke revealed just how much Ton Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) was modeled on Queen's work.

Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) is arguably one of the most famous whodunits ever written, set aboard the Orient Express traveling from Istanbul to Calais, populated with a cast of characters as memorable as the assembly of gargoyles from Death on the Nile (1937) – topped with a rich, elaborate plot and grant solution. A truly iconic detective novel and a classic of its kind, but, during the internet era, the book seems to have been downgraded a little. Apparently, the story with its exaggerated characters, world famous setting and surprise ending is too gimmicked that does not stand-up to rereading. 

So I marked the book for rereading and revisiting Murder on the Orient Express was like rereading John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins (1934) all over again. Murder on the Orient Express is to the closed-circle whodunit what The Three Coffins is to the locked room mystery. The utterly bizarre and fantastically impossible done right! One of the characters remarked that "the whole thing is a fantasy." I agree. But it worked. There were few other mystery writers at the time, or even today, who could have pulled it off. Christie did it with flying colors! 

Murder on the Orient Express begins on a winter's morning in Aleppo, Syria, where Hercule Poirot has finished an unrecorded case that "saved the honour of the French Army" and is waiting to board the Taurus Express to Stamboul – intending to take a short holiday to see the city. A telegram is waiting for him at the hotel with an urgent plea to return to London and he books a sleeping car accommodation in the Stamboul-Calais coach of the Orient Express.

Normally, it's a slack period at that time of year and there are few people traveling with trains being almost empty, but it appears "all the world elects to travel tonight." Poirot finds an "extraordinary crowd" as his traveling companions as the Orient Express "on its three-days'' journey across Europe."

There's an unpleasant American businessman, Samuel Ratchett, who Poirot likened to a wild and savage animal in a respectable suit. Ratchett brought along his personal secretary and valet, Hector MacQueen and Edward Masterman. Mrs. Hubbard is an elderly, American lady and always complaining, raising an alarm or talking about her daughter and grandchildren. She has a presence, to put it kindly. Greta Ohlsson is a Swedish is a trained nurse and matron in a missionary school near Stamboul on holiday. Colonel Arbuthnot is the consummate soldier on leave and traveling from India to England, but he has own, secretive reason to come by overland route instead of the sea. Miss Mary Debenham is a British governess to two children in Baghdad and is returning to London on holiday. There are two American businessmen, Cyrus Hardman and Antonio Foscarelli, who are respectively a traveling salesman of typewriting ribbons and an agent for Ford motor cars. But there are also members of the old European aristocracy among the passengers. Count and Countess Andrenyi are a young diplomatic couple from Hungary. Princess Dragomiroff is remnant of a vanished world, "ugly as sin, but she makes herself felt," who's extremely rich with an iron-bound determination. She brought along her German lady's maid, Hildegarde Schmidt. Lastly there are M. Bouc, a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits, whose "acquaintance with the former star of the Belgian Police Force dated back many years." The attendant of the Istanbul Calais coach, Pierre Michel, who has been a loyal employee of the company for over fifteen years. Finally, a little Greek physician, Dr. Constantine, who provides Poirot with an important piece of medical evidence.

For three days these people, "of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages," are brought together under one roof only to go their separate ways at the end of the three-day journey – "never, perhaps, to see each other again." But this journey was never destined to go according to schedule.

Poirot overhears an intimate conversation between two apparent strangers and Ratchett tries to hire him to help protect his life, which has been threatened by an enemy. Poirot turns him down ("I do not like your face, M. Ratchett") and what follows is tumultuous night in the Istanbul-Callais coach. Sounds of cries and groans. Mrs. Hubbard making a big cry about a man in her compartment who couldn't have been there. A woman wrapped in a scarlet kimono stalking down the corridor and banging on doors. The conductor tending to the needs of the passenger as he moved from compartment to compartment to answer all the tingling bells.

On the following morning, everyone aboard awakes to the news that the train has run into a snowdrift and they're now stuck somewhere in Yugoslavia. What makes their position a particularly precarious is discovery that Ratchett was brutally stabbed to death in his berth. Evidence tells them nobody could have left since they ran into the snowdrift and the murderer is still with them on the train.

M. Bouc implores Poirot to solve the case before the Yugoslavian police can have their way with his highly esteemed customers and reminds Poirot he has often heard him say "to solve a case a man has only to lie back in his chair and think." So he wants him to "interview the passengers on the train, view the body, examine what clues there are" and then let "the little grey cells of the mind" do their work. Murder on the Orient Express certainly presents one of Poirot's most fascinating investigations on record as they have "none of the facilities afforded to the police" and "have to rely solely on deduction."

Firstly, Poirot takes a page from R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke by using an old-fashioned hatbox, spirit lamp and a pair of curling tongs to make words reappear on a charred fragment of paper – which he found on the victim's bedside table. The words Poirot briefly made legible told him who Ratchett really was and this knowledge places an entirely different complexion on the case and passengers. So the middle section of the story comprises of a series of interviews, but this portion can hardly be described as "Dragging the Marsh." On the contrary! It's an example how to write a series of interrogations without dragging the story to a snail's pace like a weighted rope was tied to it. Poirot acts as both a detective and armchair general as he varies how he approaches each potential suspect. Poirot's methods with one passenger could be a complete contrast to his handling of another passenger. Methodically, the little Belgian detective gathers all the crumbs his fellow passengers left on the table during these interviews and subsequent investigation, but that would understate just how brashly clued Murder on the Orient Express really is.

Christie recklessly alluded to the truth almost from the start and never stopped. If you already know the solution, you almost want to tell her to stop in giving the whole game away. But that's what separates the true masters from the second-stringer who too often guard a second-rate clue from the reader. However, Christie not only was overly generous with her clues and hints, but she openly casts aspersion on the red herrings she planted herself! Poirot notes that the victim's compartment is "full of clues," but wonders whether he can "be sure that those clues are really what they seem to be." Christie even had a physical manifestation of the red herring prancing around the train. All these clues and red herrings form a delightful and contradictory picture with the "affair advances in a very strange manner."

There's also the ghosts of the locked room mystery and impossible crime stalking the compartments and corridors of the Orients Express. The door of Ratchett's compartment was chain-locked on the inside and the communicating door bolted on the other side in addition to two people who were seen on the train, but they cannot be found anywhere. However, these are quasi-impossibilities instead of a full-blown locked room mysteries, which is why I didn't tag this review as a locked room mystery. But it was a nice touch to the story. 

Murder on the Orient Express cements its status as a classic with a beautifully handled ending as Poirot gathers everyone in the dining car to propound two solutions to the murder. One of them is simple and full of holes, while the second solution is complicated, grotesquely fantastic, highly original and strangely convincing. A resolution that will have some readers check their moral compass to see if its broken. Sure, the passage of time has dulled the surprise and originality of the solution a little, but shouldn't detract from an overall first-class performance demonstrating why she rivaled the Bible and William Shakespeare. Deservedly so! 

Notes for the curious: the character of Dr. Constantine was very likely a nod to Molly Thynne's series-detective, Dr. Constantine, who's a Greek doctor and amateur detective. Why a nod or acknowledgment to that obscure detective? The second of Thynne's Dr. Constantine detective novels, Death in the Dentist's Chair (1933), shares a rather unique, language-based clue with Murder on the Orient Express. I wonder if Christie intended her Dr. Constantine to be same as Thynne's Dr. Constantine considering his role in the story. There's another possible crossover, one of the characters seems to have had a previous appearance in The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928), which is never acknowledged, but it would make sense if they were one and the same person – since (ROT13) gur Oyhr Genva pnfr pbhyq unir tvira gur pbafcvengbef gur vqrn gb hfr gur Bevrag Rkcerff. Finally, I reviewed Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 78 back in August and the headline story, “Mystery Express,” is an ingenious and warm homage to Murder on the Orient Express.

The Wintringham Mystery (1926/27) by Anthony Berkeley

Nearly a century ago, the Daily Mirror serialized a detective novel by Anthony Berkeley, The Wintringham Mystery (1926/27) as by "A.B. Cox," which was published as a competition that challenged the reader to find an answer to the three basic questions of the detective story – namely who, why and how. The correct solution, "or the entry that is most nearly correct," could earn a first prize of £250. A nice chunk of pocket money in the 1920s! 

A year later, Berkeley revised the original text and The Wintringham Mystery was republished in novel form under the title Cicely Disappears (1927) that was credited to the obviously pseudonymous "A. Monmouth Platts." But, after its publication, the book plunged front cover first into obscurity. Only murmurs that surrounded the story for almost a century is that Archie and Agatha Christie and her husband were runners-up in the competition ("The Crime That Christie Couldn't Crack"). Now, ninety-five years later, HarperCollins has reissued the book as part of their Collins Crime Club series. This new edition restored the original title, but kept the revised text from Cicely Disappears and comes with an insightful introduction by critic, editor and genre historian, Tony Medawar. So let's see how Berkeley's most elusive detective novel measures up to his other mysteries from the period.

Stephen Munro stepped out of the trenches of the First World War decorated with a Distinguished Service Order and a Military Cross into a nice little inheritance from his late uncle. Figuring he deserved "to have half a dozen years of life and let the future go to pot," Stephen became a carefree, frolicking gentleman of leisure, but now the money has dried up and has been trying to find a job for months – noticing "a distinct slump in the market for promising young men." Fortunately, Lady Susan Carey, at Wintringham Hall, sorely needed a footman now that the old lady has decided to do a bit more entertaining. Stephen is expected to start performing his duties on the day a house party is expected to arrive.

A transition that's awkward enough without some familiar face being part of the house party to make the situation embarrassing. There's an old flame of Stephen, Pauline Mainwaring, who arrives at Wintringham Hall with her fiance, Sir Julian Hammerstein. A well-known stockbroker and one of the wealthiest man in London. Freddie Venables is Lady Susan's nephew and an acquaintance of Stephen who refuses to treat him as a mere servant, which is liable to make "the house feel awkward and the servants' hall resentful." Particularly the butler, Martin, proves to be a thorn in Stephen's side. But they're not the only people present who can make things awkward or difficult.

Lady Susan never forgave her niece, Millicent Carey, for not having being born a boy, because "the glories of Wintringham Hall must be allied to some other name" as there were no male Careys in the direct line. She has a greater affection for Cicely Vernon than "Cicely than for any member of the younger generation" and has "the girl to stay with her on every possible opportunity." The other participants of the house party includes Lady Susan's companion, Miss Rivers. A young and distant cousin of Millicent and Lady Susan, Miss Annette Agnew, who's very direct and modern. Miss Agnew doesn't care very much about another guest, Miss  "Baby" Cullompton, who cultivated a personality matching her nickname. Colonel Uffculme is a long-time friend of Lady Susan and full with stories about his time in India ("when I was in Bengal in '93... or was it '94?"). John Starcross recently garnered fame as an explorer by crossing "some of the hitherto unpenetrated hinterland of South America" and no country house party was no complete without him. Henry Kentisbeare is a gentleman of leisure who lives on the resources of his friends. So a house full with all the potential for trouble.

The trouble begins when Freddie finds a book on witchcraft in the library, describing spells to make people vanish into thin air, suggesting they have "a pop at the disappearing stunt" in preference to playing bridge. Not everyone is as enthusiastic about the idea, but Freddie eventually gets his way and Cicely volunteers to be victim for his vanishing-act which they staged in the drawing room – while Cicely is surrounded with every exit closely guarded. Chapter VI: The Séance has a handy plan of the drawing room marking where everyone sat or stood during the séance. Cicely disappears without a trace from the guarded, pitch-black room amid screams, rapping sounds and the smell of chloroform. Stephen and Pauline turn amateur detective to find Cicely and figuring out how she could have vanished as if by magic.

So, while the detective story that follows is well written and amusing enough, the weight of the plot does not justify the length of the story. The Wintringham Mystery is a short story stretched out to book length. A very well done piece of stretching, but not even Berkeley could disguise that most of the story was padding. Quality padding. But padding nonetheless. Anthony Abbot played a similar game in his short story "About the Disappearance of Agatha King" (1932) to much better effect, because it wasn't padded out to a novel-length detective story. That being said, it was interesting to see Berkeley having fun with subverting the reader's expectations and playing around with tropes. Such as (ROT13) vtabevat gur cerfrapr bs n frperg cnffntr nf n fbyhgvba sbe gur ybpxrq ebbz fvghngvba naq gur furanavtnaf jvgu gur qrngu-genc. You can already see the mind at work that would produce The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), Jumping Jenny (1933) and his brilliant contribution to The Floating Admiral (1931) a few years later.

But, as it stands, The Wintringham Mystery stands as a fairly entertaining, but thinly-plotted and padded out, curiosity with occasional glimmers, or should that be premonitions, of things to come. However, while not a classic of its kind, I'm still glad I got to read this nearly forgotten, early detective novel by one of the Golden Age greats. I think admirers of Berkeley will be the ones who will appreciate this book the most.

Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene (2021) by P. Dieudonné

Back in 2019, P. Dieudonné followed in the footsteps of the late A.C. Baantjer with his debut novel, Rechercheur De Klerck en het doodvonnis (Inspector De Klerck and the Death Sentence, 2019), written as a tribute to the master of the Dutch politieroman, but Dieudonné began to differentiate himself from other Baantjer imitators in his subsequent novels – even improving on the old man himself. Rechercheur De Klerck en het duivelse spel (Inspector De Klerck and the Diabolical Game, 2020) added more plot complexity to the true and tried Baantjer formula. Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020) is a full-blown, neo-classical detective novel with no less than three impossible crimes and my personal favorite so far. Rechercheur De Klerck en het lijk in transito (Inspector De Klerck and the Corpse in Transit, 2021) is a traditional detective story masquerading as a contemporary police novel. 

Rechercheur De Klerck en moord in scène (Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene, 2021) plays a similar game as its predecessor, but improved on it as the Inspectors Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver have to digest a heavily leaded slice of Urban Americana in Rotterdam. But, as the detective story has learned its readers over the centuries, nothing can be more deceiving than outward appearances. 

Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene begins with De Klerck putting down the Rotterdams Dagblad and remarks to Klaver that "the youth is unhinged, orphaned" in response to an article about the discovery of drugs, fireworks and weapons in the lockers of a high school – including "a hand grenade and a loaded gun." Klaver puts it down to puberty and hormones, but that doesn't wash with the old detective and De Klerck fears that "today's street urchins are tomorrow's hitmen." And that's when their shift really begins. A skipper and old friend of De Klerck reports someone attempted to throw a gun into the water from a bridge, but the loaded, recently fired gun landed on his boat. Klaver remarks they might have gotten hold of a murder weapon and CCTV footage of the various bridges could catch them a killer before his crime is discovered ("we have never worked so fast"). Just a moment later, they're called to the Parkkade where the Harbor Police pulled a body out of the water.

The victim is very well-known to the police, Robin Breidenbach, who's "an equally popular and notorious Rotterdam rap artist." Breidenbach was known as Da Rotting Thug and his "incendiary raps" earned him admiration as well as a ton of enemies, which include an escalating blood feud with Yunus Özütok's De Leftbank Militia from Rotterdam South. A year ago, Özütok was stabbed and robbed, but he blamed Breidenbach. Two weeks later, Breidenbach's cousin was stabbed and seriously wounded by a member of De Leftbank Militia, which left him with a limb. Justin Breidenbach never mentioned this to De Klerck and Klaver, but directed their attention to his cousin's producer, Daan de Rooij. Apparently, they were having a disagreement over royalties. De Klerck sees a parallel with a "rivalry between rappers from New York and their more successful Californian colleagues" in which the two figureheads of the feud, Tupac Shakur from Los Angeles and Notorious B.I.G. from New York, were shot and killed. Is history repeating itself a quarter of a century later in Rotterdam?

So not really the plot-ingredients you expect to find in a detective story with a more traditional bend and Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene does have all the outward appearances of an uncomplicated, modern-day police novel. Dieudonné gradually and effectively spins a complicated puzzle out of an apparently ordinary and sordid crime with every new piece of information that's unearthed bringing both clarity and posing new questions. Like peeling an onion in reverse! I was reminded of the commentary on Christopher Bush's plotting-technique "of starting with very little information (victim's identity) and working outward, lightening up the darkness." A very fitting description of the plot and how it progressed with (for example) the discovery of the original scene of the crime revealing that the murder was a tricky and complicated affair, which would not have been out of place in a Golden Age mystery novel – except perhaps for the clothing and music. While the clues and red herrings were not thickly spread around the story, the ones that were present were on a whole of a good quality. The central clue is not so much a traditional clue as it's a curious, very subtly planted anomaly (oyhr, havsbezrq nyvovf) doubling as a slippery red herring. Something you either spot and note as a suspicious coincidence or miss entirely, but, if you spot it, you can work out the solution.

When I read the synopsis, I assumed Dieudonné was going to go easy on the plot this time around and dreaded having to bang out a lukewarm review, but Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene exceeded all my expectations and ranks alongside Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death as the best the series (so far) has to offer. A series that's fast becoming a personal favorite as its soothing to my nostalgic cravings and meets my demands for good, quality plots. Dieudonné, De Klerck and Klaver deserve to be introduced to an international, English-speaking audience who will be more appreciative of them. But, in the meanwhile, I'm eagerly looking forward to the next one!

If you haven't had your fill of untranslated, Dutch-language detective fiction, I recently reviewed Vanno's De moord op het sloependek (The Murder on the Boat Deck, 1941) and Anne van Doorn's Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021). And, yes, I crammed this review into a few planned posts, because didn't want to wait with posting the review until January.

Christmas Quarrels: "Murder Under the Christmas Tree" (1980) by W.L. Fieldhouse

W.L. Fieldhouse is billed online as a legendary and prolific author of action, adventure and western novels, but my interest went out to a series of short detective stories he wrote for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine about Major Clifford Lansing – an American military investigator stationed in Europe. Major Lansing appeared in nineteen short stories, published between 1979 and 1982, which have yet to be collected. So you can only read the series with such tantalizingly-titled stories as "The Two-Star Corpse" (1980) and "The Nuremberg Ripper" (1982) in their original magazine publication. This is perhaps something Crippen & Landru can remedy in the future. 

Fortunately, Fieldhouse's "Murder Under the Christmas Tree," published in the December, 1980, issue of MSMM, happened to come my way and this month seemed appropriate to finally review it.

Christmas for USAEUR personnel, stationed in West Germany, "is at best bitter-sweet and at worst painfully lonely," but even the housing districts with the military built, clone-like apartments buildings, where the married officers with their families live, are not entirely free of heartache. One evening, the dinner party of Captain Robertson is rudely interrupted by shouting, "you bastard! I'll kill you," followed by the sound of shattering glass coming from the apartment above. Major Conglose and his wife, Beverley, have another fight, but they never heard either of them threaten to kill the other before. So they pop upstairs to have a look.

What the downstairs neighbors find is a dead man, lying face down under the Christmas tree, surrounded by fragments of a broken bottle and scarlet stain covering the back of his neck caused by a sliver of glass that severed his spinal cord, but it's not Major Conglose – which places Beverley in a precarious position. Beverley confesses to Major Clifford Lansing, "the best homicide investigator in USAEUR," she has been having an affair for the past two months with the dead man, Staff Sergeant Wayne Selby. However, she has no recollection of what, exactly, happened to Selby. Beverley remembers they had been drinking wine and dozing off, but got slapped in the face and woke up to find her lover dead beneath the Christmas tree. There was nobody else in the apartment!

The front door was closed and the bedroom window unlatched, but there was no fire escape or a ladder extending from the roof above and the window looked out over an empty parking lot two stories below. Major Lansing "found no scratches to indicate that a grappling hook had been used" or "any traces of rope strand." The roof is made of slate, sharply slanted and frozen solid, which practically made it inaccessible and impossible to traverse. So that only left the closed, but unlocked, front door were it not that "people were staring into the corridor after they heard the woman shouting and the glass break." So, if Beverley is innocent, the murderer was either invisible or sprouted wings.

Major Lansing's work is not made easier by the discovery the victim was a womanizer who turned his hobby into a lucrative, but criminal, side-occupation bagging him plenty of suspects and motives. But the key to the case is figuring out how a third person could have entered and left that apartment unseen.

I think Fieldhouse actually came up with not only a new and original solution to a murder in a watched room with no apparent escape, but nicely inverted the concept of a locked room mystery by revealing there was a different kind of impossibility at the heart of the plot. The real puzzle is (ROT13) abg ubj gur zheqrere pbhyq unir rkvgrq gur ncnegzrag jvgubhg orvat fcbggrq, ohg ubj vg jnf qbar jvgubhg oernxvat nal obarf orpnhfr gurer jnf na boivbhf, hathneqrq rkvg va gur ncnegzrag. My only complaint is that the short story format smothered the plot. There were a ton of leads, false trails and clues crammed together and they all needed more room to breath and space to move around in.

Nevertheless, if "Murder Under the Christmas Tree" is indicative of the overall quality of Fieldhouse's stories, the Major Lansing series definitely deserves to be collected. This is a series I want to return to in the future and will keep an eye out for the uncollected stories until a collection materializes.

On a final, related note: I've actually come across quite a few army-themed detective novels and short stories over the years. So here's a brief overview of those reviews.

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Murderer Major (1941), The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942) and The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942).

Laurence Clarke's "Flashlights" (1918).

Paul Doherty's A Murder in Thebes (1998).

Michael Gilbert's The Danger Within (1952).

George Limnelius' The Medbury Fort Murder (1929).

Van Wyck Mason's The Fort Terror Murders (1931) and The Sulu Sea Murders (1933).

Bob van Oyen's Na afloop moord (Afterwards, Murder, 1953).

Franklyn Pell's Hangman's Hill (1946).

Theodore Roscoe's I'll Grind Their Bones (1936).

Edgar D. Smith's "Killer in Khaki" (1941).

Rex Stout's Not Quite Dead Enough (1944).

Mason Wright's The Army Post Murders (1931).

A Time for Murder (2002/13) by John Glasby

John S. Glasby was a British chemist, mathematician and a prolific fiction writer who wrote everything from science-fiction, supernatural stories and westerns to Foreign Legion sagas, hospital romances and hardboiled private eye novels on commission – producing over 300 novels and short stories under countless pennames. Glasby continued "to write with undimmed power" right up until his death, aged 82, in 2011. Over the past twenty years, a number of Glasby's novels have been reprinted in addition to several posthumous short story collections. One novel, in particular, attracted my attention for obvious reasons. 

A Time for Murder (2002/13) is advertised as an impossible murder of a kingpin of organized crime that's dropped in the lap of Glasby's most well-known series-character, Johnny Merak. A private detective from Los Angeles and one-time crook who spent three years in prison on a frameup and turned on his own organization, which (I think) lead him into becoming a private detective. Not sure how that exactly worked out.

So not exactly top-rate pulp and the Johnny Merak page, on The New Thrilling Detective Website, warns the reader to expect "a lot of breathlessly purple prose" set "in a mythical America populated by mostly over-sexed babes and gangsters" driving big, shiny cars. The page also airs the suspicion "that many, if not all, of the later Johnny Merak novels published since 2007 were actually regurgitated and possibly retitled novels dating back to the fifties." There are some hints in A Time for Murder that stuff has been added to an older story, but I'll get to that in a minute. First let's get to the story.

Johnny Merak is hired by Carlos Galecci, "one of the top man in the Organization," who believes somebody is out to kill him and wants Merak, as an ex-criminal, to dig around a little, but "a man like him makes a lot of enemies on the way to the top" – which makes his job a timely process of elimination. Three days later, Merak is summoned by Galecci's righthand man, Sam Rizzio, to the private, well guarded residence of his client. Rizzio wants to know why Galecci hired Merak, because he's currently trying to find out if anything has happened to him.

Galecci has a private, room-sized vault where he keeps his cash money and a collection of antique clocks worth no less than a hundred grand a piece. Every night, at precisely eleven-fifty, he goes in and comes out again a couple of hours later, but this time he hasn't. Only he knows the combination to open the vault door. When Merak arrives, a man is busy cutting the six-inch thick steel around the lock with an oxy-acetylene torch and eventually the door is opened to reveal the crime boss sitting at a table in the middle of the vault. There was a large metal box on the table stuffed with money ("obviously... robbery wasn't the motive") and the walls were hung with clocks of all sizes and shapes, "ticking away the minutes and seconds," but not a trace of the person who plunged a knife in Galecci's back!

Merak is baffled how a murderer could have entered the solid, steel-lined locked vault with only the dead man knowing the combination and a guards stationed outside the door and around the premise, but feels obligated to find his client's murderer. And that's where his real problems begins.

Sam Rizzio tells Merak he has no further need for his services and is rehired on the spot by the freshly-minted widow, Gloria Galecci, who believes she's next in line to be murdered. Galecci left a will that makes Gloria the sole heir of his criminal fiefdom and she intends on running it, but Merak knows Rizzio isn't going to take it lying down. So he begins to go through the motions of a run-of-the-mill gangster thriller with kidnappings at gunpoint, dangerous driving and speeding bullets, but there was actually a good scene when Merak was spirited away to a remote mansion to meet "a man who basked in the shadows," Enrico "The Boss" Manzelli – head of the entire Los Angeles Organization. Other than that, the only thing that makes the story standout is its locked room mystery full with potentially good ideas and the ghosts of clues.

Merak briefly discusses and rejects a surprisingly simplistic, but elegant, solution to the whole locked room setup. Suggesting the murdered had "knifed Galecci just as he'd opened the vault, carried him inside and set him up in that chair, before letting themselves out" and "closing the door behind them." Regrettably, the circumstances and the plot didn't allow the false and real solution to be switched around, because the simple, no-nonsense false-solution would have fitted the hardboiled style better than the more pulpier one. There were also hints that could have become good clues (ROT13): anzryl Tnyrppv'f ivfvgf gb gur inhyg univat n ebhgvar nf ur qvq “rirelguvat cerpvfryl ba gur qbg” in combination with gur qbpgbe fgngvat ur qvrq nebhaq zvqavtug naq gur pbagrag bs gur inhyg, which stood out in an otherwise very thinly plotted story. So it didn't take me very long to piece together the solution to the locked room puzzle. Glasby also picked an interesting murderer and a somewhat fresh motive, but neither were very well clued or given serious attention until near the end. However, the character is present throughout the story.

So, purely as a hardboiled private eye novel, Glasby's A Time for Murder has nothing particularly noteworthy to offer, but, as locked room mystery, it's an interesting curiosity. One that earnestly tried to introduce a cerebral locked room problem into a fast-moving world populated with tough guys, dangerous dames and menacing crime lords who operate from the shadows. A combination that has been attempted before and since with much more success, but a well intended attempt from Glasby that makes the story an interesting curiosity for everyone who's neck deep into impossible crime fiction. 

Notes for the curious: I mentioned there were clues and hints, here and there in the story, suggesting A Time for Murder is an older story that was touched up a little to be published as a modern P.I. Firstly, you have the historical clues. There are several references to the 1920s. One of the gangster makes a reference to a possible "return to the bad old days of the twenties" and the need to maintain order, which is something a gangster from the (more or less) immediate post-prohibition era would say than towards the end of the century. Another reference comes when a block just behind Central Avenue is described as "one of those places that had been up since the beginning of the century" and "had seen everything from before the roaring twenties to prohibition and the gangster era" before settling down as a collection of "dingy bars, night clubs and strip shows" – which is a brief history placing the story in the 1950s or early '60s. So the story definitely had a pre-2002/2013 publication, or version, but there are also some technological clues suggestion stuff had been added later. Cars, guns and landline telephones are the most sophisticated pieces of technology in the story, which also pushes the dating of the book closer to the fifties or sixties. But it made two things particular stick out. When Merak is brought to the mansion of the big crime boss, he "scanned the corners of the wall for any cameras" that might be studying his reaction. I know CCTV is an inheritance from World War II and the possibility was there as early as 1949 to have a live (unrecorded) monitoring television system, but it was pretty obscure until recording the footage was possible. That didn't happen until 1960s and '70s. A second thing that stood out is when Merak burglarized a shop, he cuts a hidden wire that would trigger an alarm at police headquarters, if he tried to force the window. This kind of (wired) burglar alarm seems too modern for the 1950s and too antiquated for the 2000s and 2010s. So here have a story clearly set somewhere around the middle of the previous century, but with two different publication dates from the next century and stylistic touches suggesting the text was slightly modernized. Long story short, Thrilling Detectives is probably right about the 2000s titles being retitled novels.

An addendum: Philip Harbottle emailed an important correction as the later Merak stories are not rewrites of earlier stories. I was given permission to add his correction as an addendum to the review, because I didn't want to remove or smudge over my mistake. So here is Harbottle's email: 

Pretty fair review of my friend and client John Glasby's novel, for which I thank you, but I would be very grateful if you could remove the rather offensive garbage quoted from that website—which you appear to endorse—that all later Merak stories were rewrites of earlier works. THEY ARE NOT. There were only 2 novels published in the late 50s: Blood on My Shadow (1956) and This Time Forever (1957). A third, The Savage City, followed in 1961, when the original publisher reprinted the first of them with a new title, Racket Incorporated, and when it was reprinted in the US in 1973, it was called The Organization. I preferred Racket Incorporated when I had it reprinted. ALL the others, beginning with A Time to Die, were brand new, original novels which John Glasby wrote at my request. He was halfway through a new one when he sadly died, and the fragment remains unfinished and unpublished. These later novels were of course simply SET in the late 1950s, which is the period Merak operated. Similarly, the text was NOT edited and updated by me, or anyone else. The second novel, This Time Forever (1957) has sadly never been reprinted, only because I have never been able to find a copy! The author never possessed one, since Spencer didn’t provide comps. I suspect it may well be one of the best, judging by Adey’s description.

Mom Meets Her Maker (1990) by James Yaffe

James Yaffe was an American professor of English and mystery writer who debuted aged 15 with "D.I.C." in the July, 1943, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine that introduced his first series-character and head of the NYPD's Department of Impossible Crime, Paul Dawn, who appeared in half a dozen short stories – published in EQMM between 1943 and 1946. A regrettably uneven, short-lived series that peaked with the brilliant "The Problem of the Emperor's Mushrooms" (1945) and hit a low with "Cul de Sac" (1945). By the 1950s, the training wheels had come off and Yaffe created two new series-characters more closely aligned with Rex Stout and Ellery Queen than the John Dickson Carr inspired Paul Dawn stories. 

Dave is a detective on the New York Homicide Squad who visits his Jewish Mom every Friday in the Bronx to tell her about his latest unsolved murder case and "between the chopped liver and the strudel she always managed to solve it," which made him an inspector before he was forty. Dave and Mom appeared in eight short stories from 1952 to 1968 and were collected in My Mother, the Detective (1997). A collection Mike Grost highly praised as "one of the most important contemporary collections of mystery short stories" with plots "as good as those in classical writers" like Agatha Christie. My Mother, the Detective received an enlarged edition with an extra story, "Mom Lights a Candle" (2002), but Dave and Mom had a real revival in the late 1980s and early '90s. 

Yaffe revived Dave and Mom in four novel-length mysteries, published between 1988 and 1992, but the series had some notable changes in scenery and format. 

Dave is now a widower and moved from New York to Mesa Grande, Colorado, where he become the chief investigator for the public defender's office, but disliked leaving his 75-year-old mother behind in her New York apartment – who had to find another pastime now that her "homicidal connection was cut." Playing detective was among "the greatest pleasures of her life" and she always looked forward to Friday evenings. So she moved to Mesa Grande as she was pleasantly surprised to discover "people kill each other just as easy in the Southwest as they do in the Northeast." Dave had enough cases with unusual features on his plate to keep his mother from being bored. 

Mom Meets Her Maker (1990) is the second novel in the series and takes place during Christmas week. The story begins with a case grabbed from the headlines, "Minister Shot in Anti-Christmas Assault; Harvard Student Held for Attempted Murder," which played out a little differently than reported in the only newspaper of Mesa Grande.

Abe and Sarah Meyer retired to Mesa Grande, where they bought a one-story house with their savings, living not uncomfortably on Social Security and Abe's pension, but lately, their "paradise turned into hell." Two years ago, the Reverend Chuck Candy moved into the house next door with his family and nothing happened until last November. Candy began to extravagantly decorate his house until it resembled "the Christmas display window of a metropolitan department store" complete with lights, "flickering on and off in five different colors," across the roof, windows and statues of Santa Clauses, the Virgin Mary and Child. All of it "outlined in bright garish orange neon," also flickering on and off, while the lawn Santa Clauses make "appropriate ho-ho noises." There were also loudspeakers blaring thunderous Christmas carols from early morning to late into the night, which attracted a lot of sightseers. That began to take its toll on the Meyers.

So when their son, Roger Meyer, comes home from Yale and saw the nervous, frayed state of his parents, he goes next door to confront Candy, but it becomes an altercation in which a gun is drawn and fired – leading to Roger being arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. The case ends up on the desk of the Public Defender and Dave's boss, Mrs. Ann Swenson, who immediately find themselves caught in a two-way fight. They have to ensure Roger gets the best possible defense guaranteed by the American Constitution, but Arthur T. Hatfield, of the Mesa Grande Republicam-American newspaper, is making a personal crusade out of a Jewish, out-of-town student shooting a local Christian minister over Christmas lights and music. Already accusing the local authorities of being soft on crime and allowing "their hearts bleed for the lawbreaker" at the expense of his victim.

Mom nudged Dave in a direction casting a more sobering light on the Christmas decoration fracas and potentially good news for Roger, but then Candy is shot and killed in his own home. His body was found in the living room practically under the Christmas tree, which is very relevant. A wounded and dying Candy opened a present with crayons and wrote a dying message on the carpet, "GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH."

An incomprehensible dying message that the local police has no use for as they bloody shoeprints in the hallway and fingerprints on the murder weapon incriminating Roger Meyer. There's even a witness who saw Roger entering the home around the time of the murder and came running out five minutes later "looking very agitated." Since he's nowhere to be found, the case against Roger looks very grave. Even worse is that Dave and Swenson have to contend with different parties who, for one reason or another, try to muscle in on the case. The local chapter of the ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union) wants to take over the defense and they can get a well-known lawyer, Victor Kincaid, who "had defended every radical and war protester and activist in sight" during the 1960s. Swenson knows what he wants to defend is a symbol. Not a person. So he wouldn't shy away from making a media spectacle out of the case with Roger's life hanging in the balance. On the other hand, there's the small town politics with demands Roger pleads guilty to second-degree murder to prevent damaging the reputation of a town currently undergoing considerable growth.

All of this takes place against the preparations and eventual celebration of Christmas with Santa Clauses doubling in the streets every day, the traditional lightening of Christmas Tree and a never-ending stream of Christmas songs and movies on the radio and television – while "Joy to the World" was being caroled all over town. You're advised to pay close attention to these festive scenes or you might miss something very clever and subtle that went unacknowledged in Mom's solution.

So, right up until the ending, my impression is that Mom Meets Her Makes was nothing more than one of those modern, lightweight mysteries (borderline cozy), but with the serious frown of a contemporary crime novel. Well, I lived up to my reputation as a fallible armchair detective. You see, I wrongly assumed I spotted the key to the dying message that identified the murderer with only the motive requiring a bit of educated guesswork, which turned out to be a trap. A very, very deep trap as Yaffe went full-blown Ellery Queen with twists and false-solutions. Every single false-solution could have ended the story without leaving me disappointed at the end. Mom Meets Her Maker gloriously broke with that long-standing tradition of the false-solution(s) outshining the correct one! Yaffe interestingly wrapped up the false-solutions in the title of the book. 

Mom Meets Her Maker opens and closes with Mom praying to God and asking for guidance, because she has not told the whole truth and has a crisis of conscience. What she has withhold from her son and the authorities gives one last and correct interpretation of the dying message, which has the kind of religious imagery that can be found in EQ. It's a shame Frederic Dannay was no longer alive when the book first appeared. He would have loved this seasonal, 1990s take on The Glass Village (1954) stuffed with all his favorite plot ingredients!

Lastly, I have to go back to Mom as an interesting specimen of the armchair detective. Dave regularly reports back to her and, while he eats, she listens and "no detail, no matter how trivial, ever escapes from that rat-trap memory of hers." She does some sleuthing on her own and, while that happens off-page, it makes her a very active armchair who works on her feet. Whether she's feeding her son or talking to people under the guise of being social, Mom is gathering and piling on the details to make up her case. So I can see how the original run of short stories may have influenced Isaac Asimov's Black Widower series. Yaffe's Mom and Asimov's Henry are two characters cut from the same cloth. 

Mom Meets Her Maker is a remarkable addition to the lineup of seasonal-themed detective novels doing the murder around Christmastime the American way. Exuberantly loud! No quiet, snowed-in mansion in the British countryside, but a town decorated from one end to another complete with gunfire, petty, small town politics and a bit of religious strife. What's hiding underneath, like a wrapped present, is a first-rate, EQ-style detective story with multiple false-solutions superbly making use of the dying message trope. There are surprisingly few classic dying message novels, or even short stories, but Yaffe's Mom Meets Her Makes can be counted among those few classics.

Here Be Dragons: "The Donnington Affair" (1914) by G.K. Chesterton and Max Pemberton

I've commented before that the size and scope of the traditional detective story never ceases to amaze me. Every time you think you know the lay of the land, a completely forgotten, long out-of-print writer is rediscovered or the growing popularity of translations breaking open a previously inaccessible part of the genre – like a large and open world that can be perpetually explored. Over the years, I've stumbled down an obscure rabbit hole, or two, but you don't always have to navigate uncharted waters to find dragons. 

I knew G.K. Chesterton wrote two uncollected Father Brown stories, "The Vampire of the Village" (1936) and "The Mask of Midas" (1936), when he was practically on his deathbed, but only recently discovered he co-wrote a proto-Detection Club tale during the early months of the Great War.

Max Pemberton was a British writer of crime-and adventure fiction who's a "somewhat of artistically minor member of the Rogue school" and published an unfinished crime story in the October, 1914, issue of The Premier. The open-ended story, "The Donnington Affair," posed a challenge "to several leading mystery writers of the day" to come up with a solution to the murder Pemberton so carefully described. Chesterton appears to have been the only one who picked up the gauntlet and neatly tidied up the whole problem in "Father Brown and the Donnington Affair," which was published in the November issue of The Premier and then promptly forgotten about until the 1980s – when it was rediscovered and reprinted in The Chesterton Review. The two halves have since been reprinted as a single story and can be found in The Complete Father Brown Stories (2012). But why "The Donnington Affair" remains so little-known today is a mystery as it has the kind of plot complexity you'd expect from the detective story of the 1930s and '40s.

The first half of the story introduces the Priest-in-charge of the Parish of Borrow-in-the-Vale, John Barrington Cope, who's engaged to Harriet Donnington, but her home life is an unhappy one. Harriet and Evelyn live at Borrow Close under the thumb of their domineering, old-world father, Sir Borrow Donnington, who "shut the doors alike upon the old world and the new" when his wife passed away. Ever since Lady Donnington's death, the place "has become mediæval in its isolation" with Cope being the only visitor as a future member of the family. That makes him the lucky one. Sir Borrow rudely showed Evelyn's suitor, Captain Kennington, the door and disowned his only, troublesome son. A "disgraceful affair" ended Southby Donnington's university career and became "a derelict in the dangerous seas of London's underworld," which ended with him being arrested on a charge of forgery and sentenced to three years in prison. So his father "swore that Southby should never enter his house again," but that becomes a sticky situation when he escapes from prison with a cellmate. Before too long, the grounds of Borrow Close are swarming with suspicious-looking characters (policemen in disguise) and culminates with a tragic murder of one of the family members.

Pemberton's portion of the story ends with the line "God send us enlightenment that the guilty may be punished" and Chesterton, acting as deputy deity, dispatched Father Brown to the scene of the crime.

Father Brown is true to form. Appearing unexpectedly as "a stumpy, apologetic person with a big hat and a bad umbrella" who sees meaning in seemingly meaningless statements and unimportant things. Such as pointing out "that in a murder case the guiltiest person is not always the murderer" or that the key to the case might be found in the statement that Southby's cellmate was "the cheeriest person possible." Slowly, but surely, Father Brown bicycles the reader through a surprisingly complex plot towards a solution that felt both logical and enviable to the point where you almost believe Chesterton and Pemberton had the whole thing planned out from the beginning!

There were, however, two aspects that were a little hard to swallow. Such as (ROT13) gung jubyr pbireg cbyvpr bcrengvba bire jung'f ernyyl abguvat zber guna n fvzcyr sbetrel pnfr and I was rather skeptical of gur snzvyvny erfrzoynapr va unaqjevgvat “nyzbfg nzbhagvat gb snpfvzvyr," but the latter seems to have some truth to it. So why has almost never been used in a detective stories? You would expect mystery writers to be all over such a handy piece of misdirection.

Chesterton wrote much better, more memorable Father Brown stories, but his collaboration with Pemberton is still far above the average detective story of the 1910s and historically significant as an ancestor of future round-robin mystery novels – like The Floating Admiral (1931) and The President's Mystery Plot (1936). More than deserving of being re-rediscovered today. And, perhaps, there's more to be uncovered or even added. Who were the other leading mystery writers of the day Pemberton challenged to find a solution? Did anyone beside Chesterton accept the challenge? What happened to their story? There seem to be some clues and hints in Pemberton's half that could potentially have opened the door for other writers. The story mentioned that one of the characters knows “half the crooks in Europe” and one of its most well-known crooks is E.W. Hornung's A.J. Raffles. Chesterton glossed over "terrible wound in the throat" of the victim, but a murder weapon was never identified and could have attracted the attention R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke or any of the other scientific detectives from that era. A collection with all of their different takes on Pemberton's problem would have been an iconic work of the pre-GAD era. A murder that takes place across the mystery multiverse and solved by the best detectives of that era in their respective universes. Ah, the road not taken!

So why didn't it happen? Probably bad timing. Hornung stopped writing fiction in 1914 and Freeman, like so many at the time, become involved with that little skirmish known as the First World War.