Flower O' the Peach (1916) by W.A. Mackenzie

W.A. Mackenzie was a Scottish poet, journalist, illustrator, editor and writer who served in Belgium, France and Italy during the First World War, where he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery in combat, but committed himself to humanitarian causes when the war ended – serving as Secretary-General of Save the Children International from 1920 to 1939. Mackenzie even acted as the Pope's representative on the British Save the Children Council. Not a bad resume at all. Just as important as Mackenzie's war record and humanitarian work, if not more so, was his contribution to the early, pre-Golden Age detective story of the early 20th century.

From 1903 to 1916, Mackenzie produced eight novels of crime, detection and mystery of which four feature Sir Nigel Lacaita, K.C.B., of Scotland Yard. This series comprises of The Drexel Dream (1904), His Majesty's Peacock (1904), The Black Butterfly (1907) and The Bite of the Leech (1914), while The Glittering Road (1903), In the House of the Eye (1907), The Red Star of Night (1911) and Flower O' the Peach (1916) appear to be non-series, standalone titles. All eight are obscure, out-of-print mysteries that even in the public domain (Mackenzie died in 1942) stubbornly remain obscure and out-of-print. Somewhat annoying as Mackenzie last novel has been on my wishlist ever since reading about in Robert Adey's introduction to Locked Room Murders (1991).

Adey made special note of Mackenzie's Flower O' the Peach on account of its memorable detective, "the rather common, aitch-dropping "Slow and Sure" Jackson," but also noted the book's connection to an untranslated, 19th century French short impossible crime story, "Le verrou" ("The Bolt," 18XX) – written by poet and author Armand Sylvestre. Well, my interest was piqued! Not merely because it's one of those tantalizingly obscure, out-of-print and reach locked room mysteries, which helps, but it's also one of those all too rare, World War I era mysteries. So was very surprised, and very pleased, when Serling Lake suddenly reprinted it back in February. I snapped up a copy faster than an old school pulp writer could crank out a short story.

Just one more thing, before getting to the story. I tried to find out if Mackenzie wrote Flower O' the Peach prior to the outbreak of WWI or between soldiering on the continent, but without result. I wondered as there's no mention of the war or allusions to a war anywhere in the story. On the contrary, Mackenzie wrote a piece of pure escapism blending crime, mystery and Ruritanian romance with all the flourishes of a French popular novel from the then turn-of-the-century ("we Britishers live on French literature today..."). So even though the story evidently takes place around the time it was published ("ain't you never h'ard of Flyin' Machines?"), it should be taken as an alternative cloud cuckoo 1916 where bad things do happen, but nothing as devastating as a global war. I wanted that cleared up as its status as a WWI era mystery was one of the reasons it attracted my attention. So... with that out of the way, let's get to the case at hand.

Flower O' the Peach begins on a pleasant, sunny May afternoon in Pall Mall as Sir Jacinth Coke ("K.C.B., K.C.V.O., etc, etc.") wanders into the Ambassadors' Club and spots an old friend, Baron Eskilstuna, who's former representative of the King of Gothland at the Court of Saint James. Baron Eskilstuna has come to London with a mission: to look for a wife. Not a wife for himself, but a wife for the youngest brother of the current King of Gothland, the Duke of Dalecarlia. A year previously, the Duke was in Brittany to visit Sainte Anne d'Auray when he saw the love of his life, but, before she vanished into the crowd, took a picture and has done everything within his power to put a name to that face as he intends to marry her – having already secured permission from his brother ("...the King is willing to permit a marriage"). That's not as easy a task as it would be today and the Duke finally commissioned Baron Eskilstuna to find her, but the Baron has about as much success as the Duke.

Sir Jacinth comes to the rescue as he recognizes the woman in the photograph. The woman is Brenda, daughter of his oldest friend Udo Dapifer, who can "show even better birth than your Duke." Udo Dapifer is currently staying at Dawling Hall and Sir Jacinth is prepared to introduce Baron Eskilstuna, but, while "the matchmakers were plotting and planning," Udo Dapifer died without knowing "a Prince of Blood Royal was seeking in marriage the hand of his beloved daughter." Shortly following Udo's death, his son and heir, Captain Godwin Dapifer is murdered in his bedroom "door bolted, window ditto." But the doctor dispels the possibility of suicide. So it's murder.

This is the point where Olaf, Prince of Gothland, Duke of Delacarlia enters the picture under the name of "Mr. Goodman" to place his services entirely at the disposal of Brenda ("I shall fight for her in this affair... and in the fighting I shall win her"). And, as Mr. Goodman, he mainly tries to get hold of a green, blood smeared ribbon and green dress belonging to Brenda rather than a proper detective in a country house whodunit investigating a locked room murder. But then again, that type of detective story was still very much in its infancy in 1916. So it really isn't worth mentioning the few other characters involved in this dance around the dress, ribbon and solution to murder, except the previously mentioned "Slow and Sure" Jackson.

Jackson is the local jack-of-all-trade who does everything from digging graves, gardening and delivering milk bottles to selling insurances and now grabbing the opportunity to play a "rural Sherlock Holmes." Or, as he calls it, "clim' the greasy pole of mystery an' bring down the leg o' mutton of truth." Jackson gets ridiculed for trying to outsmart both the police and a killer, "you have made yourself ridiculous, Henry Jackson, by interfering in your blundering way with the affairs of your better," but it's Jackson who finds an explanation for the problem of the bolted door – which honestly left me in two minds. The locked room-trick belongs to one of the categories of basic tricks from John Dickson Carr's "Locked Room Lecture" from The Three Coffins (1935), but with a small, stylistic difference. Normally, this trick is considered crude and not terribly imaginative. A trick usually suggested as a simple, throwaway false-solution, but here the trick appeared as smooth as French silk. I suppose that part of the trick is what Mackenzie found so attractive in Armand Sylvestre's short story "The Bolt."

I'm not a fan of copy/pasting other people's work, but fair's fair, Mackenzie gave Sylvestre all the credit for this version of the trick in a story-within-a-story, of sorts, sequence. Jackson finds an old news paper report about a murder trial in France where the murderer used Sylvestre's idea to leave a body locked away behind a bolted door, but a copy of the book was found in the killer's room resulting in an arrest and trial. Mackenzie praises Sylvestre through this newspaper report and even included a translated paragraph from "The Bolt" demonstrating how to work the trick as smoothly as possible ("...gently, oh! so gently"). While not entirely new, it made Flower O' the Peach feel somewhat ahead of its time as a locked room mystery with a solution that comes across as far more sophisticated than was still customary for the time. I really appreciated Mackenzie gave Sylvestre his credit, because it would been very unlikely we would have ever known.

Finally, I should mention the unusual and memorable ending without spoiling too much. Fittingly, Mackenzie gave Flower O' the Peach a fairy tale-like ending, but, like most European fairy tales, it's not without grimness. Believe me, those last two pages are a trip! It can even be argued it's the only time the war shows its influence over the story, but with the happy ending the real world never got. Like I said, Flower O' the Peach is pure escapism.

So, other than the neat, if ultimately simple, locked room angle and the character of “Slow and Sure” Jackson, Mackenzie's Flower O' the Peach is closer to the mysterious flight of fancies of Gaston Leroux and Maurice Leblanc than the impossible crimes of Carr or the early detective stories of Sherlock Holmes. I can only recommend it, if you're in the mood for something light, off the beaten track on a lazy afternoon. I very much look forward what long forgotten, out-of-print treasure Serling Lake is going to reprint next.

The Snake of Luvercy (1926/27) by Maurice Renard

John Pugmire passed away in 2024 and his death not only meant the end of Locked Room International, but also ended the steady stream of translations of Paul Halter and other, often obscure, French mystery writers – none of whom would have gotten translated without him. Just the translation of Michel Herbert and Eugène Wyl's La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932) alone is as big a contribution to the genre as introducing Halter to a global audience. So, when it comes to translations of French (locked room) mystery novels, not much has been published for the past two years.

Tom Mead translated Pierre Véry's Les veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed Tower, 1937) for Crippen & Landru and currently is doing some fresh translations of previously published Paul Halter novels. So was considering to finally give Émile Gaboriau a shot or revisit Gaston Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) when I got fantastic news. Pushkin Vertigo is going to publish a long wished for and overdue translation of Pierre Boileau's Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Murderer, 1939) in November! I guess the people at Pushkin Vertigo have read "The Hit List: Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated." Maybe a translation of Rafeal Bernal's Un muerto en la tumba (A Dead Man in the Tomb, 1946) next year?

Earlier this year, Serling Lake reprinted Maurice Renard's ? Lui ? Histoire d'un mystère (Him? The Story of a Mystery, 1926/27), which appeared in English under the title The Snake of Luvercy – translated by Florence Crewe-Jones and published by E.P. Dutton & Co in 1930. Renard is best remembered today as one of the pioneering French science-fiction writers, even creating his own subgenre dubbed "Scientific Marvel Fiction," but Renard also tried his hands at detective fiction. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, is a fan who called The Snake of Luvercy "an excellent, fast paced thriller" containing "a murder in a locked bathroom with a bizarre solution involving a baroque murder means." John also praised Renard's Les mains d'Orlac (The Hands of Orlac, 1920) for being "a brilliantly fashioned detective novel wherein a series of impossible crimes are made to appear to be the work of supernatural agencies and a spectral being." So picked up the recent reprint of The Snake of Luvercy and hunting for a copy of The Hands of Orlac, because that's what John Pugmire would have wanted.

In 1926, The Snake of Luvercy was serialized in L'Intransigeant and published as a novel the following year. So a typical French roman-feuilleton full with sensational twists, turns and spins. You can say the story as a flexible as the titular snake driven entirely by a small, tightly-knit cast of characters.

Firstly, there are Miss Gilberta Laval and her dashing fiancé, Jean Mareuil, who's a rich dilettante who collects antique keys and old lamps. This match made in heaven spells trouble for Gilberta's aunt and cousin, Mme. de Prasse and her only son, Lionel. Mme. de Prasse plan had been for Lionel to marry Gilberta, secure the family fortune and cover up a slight financial irregularity ("...well, your gambling debts, Lionel, you know..."). Mme. de Prasse is Gilberta's legal guardian, but refreshingly, she doesn't hold the same power over her ward like her American and British counterparts ("armed with the Code, she could get rid of me and demand an accounting of her affairs..."). So they have to keep up appearances while plotting and carefully making their moves, which means acting as detectives, shadowing and poking around Jean Mareuil's private affairs hoping to find scandal and skeleton – anything to break them up. They enlist the help of the Lavals ex-butler, Aubry, who has a score to settle with Gilberta for sacking him.

While on shadowing duty, Aubry and Lionel discover a secret that could be a potential engagement breaker. Jean Mareuil moonlights as a snake charmer, Charlot the Adder, who's is an entertainment act in the dark cabarets of the Parisian underworld. But are they dealing with a double identity or dual personality? There's also a locked room murder lurking in the background of the story.

Five years ago, Guy Laval, an explorer, brought back "a number of rare serpents" from Central Africa to their home, Luvercy, but one of the deadly snakes escaped and found its way into Jeanne Laval's "almost hermetically closed" bedroom. The open windows were shuttered, however, each shutter is "pierced with a little heart-shaped opening cut in the wood for ventilation" big enough for a viper to slither through. Jeanne Laval was bitten while asleep and died. The guilt of having caused this accident killed her husband and left their daughter an orphan in the hands of her aunt, but could it have been murder? But who did it and how? The snake that killed Jeanne was never found leaving a Gilberta traumatized determined to never return to Luvercy. Getting her to return to Luvercy to confront the past becomes an ever increasing important plot point towards the end.

The Snake of Luvercy is what can be expected from a pulp-style, roman-feuilleton in the spirit of Gaston Leroux, Maurice Leblanc and a dash of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So hardly an orthodox, traditionally-plotted and clued detective novel, but credit where credit's due, the story is better written and handled than expected going by the first-half. The murderer is surprisingly well-hidden with enough nudges and hints to make a fairly educated guess, while the locked room-trick is not as open to educated guesswork. However, the method to create the locked room perfectly fitted the story's pulpy, sensationalist aesthetics and put to excellent use to help reveal, and dispose, of that murderer. I suspect that scene was also meant as a sly wink to a very famous short detective story involving a murderous snake. So, while not exactly what I'm looking for when hunting for impossible crime classics, neither left it me disappointed. On the contrary, I admired how Renard handled and controlled a story involving dual identities, an impossible snake bite and snake charmers without resorting to second-and third-rate cliches and tropes like a long-lost twin, secret passages or strange poisons. You know, unlike some writers at the time.

So, in closing, Renard simply wrote a tremendously entertaining, fast-paced flight of fancy done in the unmistakable, reality-be-damned Gallic style from Leroux's era. If you enjoyed the quality, pulp-style (locked room) mysteries by James Ronald, Noël Vindry and Alexis Gensoul and Charles Grenier, The Snake of Luvercy should be right up your alley. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward with curiosity what Serling Lake is going reprint next.

Time Wants a Skeleton: C.M.B. vol. 9-10 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 9 opens with a two-part, two chapter story, "The Sun and a Folklore," which brings Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to Machu Picchu, Peru, accompanied by their mutual frenemy, Mau Sugal – a black market broker and professional nuisance. Sugal explains to a skeptical Shinra a piece of Inca gold has turned up ("most of the Inca gold was melted down by the Spanish into gold ingots"). It happened during a curious incident two weeks ago.

Professor Polaiyu discovered in the university archives an uncatalogued quipu ("a necklace that conveys a message using the number of knots") with knots and markings he had never seen before. After studying the quipu, Professor Polaiyu became convinced it conveyed a coded map of the underground tunnels leading "from the Temple of Sunlight to the Golden City." So he organized a small expedition into the tunnel system with a local guide, Hulio, but only the young guide came back out clutching a piece of Inca gold. Hulio's story is that he lost the professor when the batteries of his flashlight died, but refuses to tell where he found the gold. Not long after getting involved in the case, the body of the professor is found near the exit along with his digital camera with blurry pictures on it. And the first part ends with an unambiguous murder.

I wouldn't call "The Sun and a Folklore" a typical, traditional whodunit, more an adventures mystery of myth and folklore, but thought the problem of batteries presented an inspired piece of clueing – strengthened by its conclusion. A slightly unexpected and unusual conclusion with the last two panels adding a touch of sad tragedy to the whole case. So, in many ways, a typical Katou story and a good one at that!

The second story, "The Metamorphosis," is a one-chapter short taking place at Meiyuu Private High School's library. Shinra and Tatsuki are in the library, helping out with chores, when they spot a picture hanging above the door. A strange picture depicting "a beautiful butterfly with a grotesque looking caterpillar," which turns out to be relatively valuable drawing by the 17th century entomologist and scientific illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian. So, of course, they let it hang above the door and, as to be expected, it disappeared. The circumstances under which it disappeared makes it something of an impossible crime. There was only one student present in the library and the picture vanished during a 30 minute window, during which nobody could have taken the picture out of its frame without being noticed by the student ("the windows, they were all locked"). So, if the student is innocent, who stole the picture and how? Shinra's solution is as ingenious as it's impractical and liable to misfire, but Katou was obviously aware of the problem and worked the difficulty of pulling off this trick into the solution. I allow it! :)

The third and last one-chapter story from this volume is "Abortive Migration" and brings Shinra and Tatsuki to the island of Okinawa to photograph marine wildlife. They have two diving instructors to along with them, Tsuruoka Nobuaki and his wife Miki, but the two have a badly disguised argument and it later turns out to be related to his first wife, Keiko – who died in a tragic diving accident. Tsuruoka and Keiko had been diving when encountering a lot of dead fish and eventually a humpback whale. But he "lost track of her beneath the shadow of the whale." Keiko's body would not be found until a week later. Tsuruoka Nobuaki has ever since lived under a cloud of suspicion and now it's coming to a head with his second wife. I guess you can pigeonhole this story in the psychological crime slot, but personally found a dull and weak story to close out this otherwise excellent volume.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 10 has four, one-chapter stories starting with a personal favorite, "Sixty Million Years," in which a brother-and-sister team of archaeologists, Hera and Joyce Colbert, ask Shinra to come out to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Hera and Joyce unearthed, what can only be called, an impossible fossil, "human and dinosaur fossils, together in the same strata." But there they are, "together with the dinosaur fossil placed above the human fossil" ("this is clearly impossible"). Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, is called upon to authenticate and, if possible, explain what they found. It's to be regretted Katou only gave the story a single chapter instead of two, or three, chapters to explore the possibility of faking such a fossil and some of the fringe theories ("...an advanced ancient civilization existed"), which were only mentioned passing. However, Shinra's explanation places this story in the same category as Ross Rocklynne's "Time Wants a Skeleton" (1941) and James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars (1977) without treading into science-fiction or hybrid mystery territory. "Sixty Million Years" simply is an impressive piece of 19th century-style naturalist impossible crime fiction reimagined in the 21st century with a 65 million year old conundrum. To say I liked this story would be the understatement of the Holocene Epoch!

Unfortunately, the next two, one-chapter stories, "The Nail" and "Summer Holiday at the World End," were both very minor and disappointing stories. "The Nail" begins with a series of good, old-fashioned creepy chain mails, "if you don't make this picture into your background wallpaper, you will receive grave misfortunes," going round Shinra and Tatsuki's school. The place in the picture is easily identified and this leads to hit-and-run incident where the culprits claims the victim was pushed in front of his car. I thought this story was uncharacteristically uninspired as Katou simply retreaded the core idea from "Abortive Migration" (SPOILER/ROT13: gur fhccbfrqyl vaabprag fhfcrpg jub gheaf bhg gb or thvygl nsgre nyy) with pretty much the same results. "Summer Holiday at the World End" is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart taking place on the last day of summer break as Shinra, Tatsuki and classmates go the beach. There they hear a strange story of a student who briefly disappeared while exploring a mysterious cave with their friends. So they go explore it for themselves. Not really a bad story. Just very minor and very forgettable.

Katou pulls it together with the last story and ends C.M.B. vol 10 on a banger. "The Hydraulis" finds Shinra and Tatsuki in Milan, Italy, where Mau Sugal wants them to investigate a music chapel, located on a lonely mountain top, which has a hydraulis – a prototype of the pipe organ. That's the first of two mysteries attached to the music chapel. What's an out-of-date hydraulis doing in a 16th century music chapel? The second mystery has to do with its haunted reputation as a room that kills and harms. Everyone who tries to play the organ either dies or get seriously ill ("...there have been over 10 people who died inside that chapel"). "The Hydraulis" shares the same strengths and one weakness with "Sixty Million Years." Shinra's explanation of both how the music chapel poses a danger to people and why it was designed to do so are brilliant. But it needed another chapter to fully flesh everything out. Like the not unimportant historical background of the chapel and location. Other than that, this is a first-rate impossible crime story and original take of the room-that-kills. Highly recommended!

So, all in all, not a bad score for these two volumes. "Abortive Migration" and "The Nail" are the only two stinkers with "Summer Holiday at the World End" merely being forgettable. "The Sun and a Folklore" and "The Metamorphosis" are both good, solid efforts with "Sixty Million Years" and "The Hydraulis" being the two standouts. You expect one of them to turn up on that future "Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B." Not at all disappointed with these two volumes on a whole. What I'm not sure of yet is whether I'm going with C.M.B. vol. 11 and 12 next or start on Q.E.D. iff series. You'll see eventually.

The Moving House of Foscaldo (1925/26) by Charles Chadwick

Charles Chadwick was an American author, lawyer, sportsman and a former college athlete, a Yale strongman, who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics and nearly won bronze in the men's hammer throw event – narrowly missing out on the medal by a few meters. Chadwick was a lawyer by trade who served as New York City's deputy assistant district attorney, worked as a sports writer for New York World and contributed short stories for publications like The Popular Magazine, The Ladies' Home Journal and Sport Story Magazine. Much more important than his public service and dalliance with sports is the fact Chadwick published two detective novels during the 1920s.

Robert Adey not only listed Chadwick's The Cactus (1925) and The Moving House of Foscaldo (1925/26) in Locked Room Murders (1991), but highlighted and praised them in the introduction ("both are well worth reading"). I mentioned Chadwick's two detective novels in 2022 blogpost "Curiosity is Killing the Cat: Detective Novels That Need to Be Reprinted," but their obscurity and not having been in print for a century appeared to be an obstacle to their speedy return to print, one way or another. So was pleased when I recently came across a fresh reprint of Chadwick's The Moving House of Foscaldo.

Last year, I reviewed a reprint of Joseph Gollomb's The Girl in the Fog (1923) from a small, independent publisher, Serling Lake, which specialized in reprinting obscure, out-of-print locked room mystery novels – under the banner "Impossible Crime Classics." That sounded better than it was at the time as the then modest selection consisting mostly of earlier, poorer works from the public domain. Gollomb's The Girl in the Fog is nothing less than third-rate tripe and the titles added over the past year weren't much better, at least until recently. G.E. Locke's The Scarlet Macaw (1923) and Elsa Barker's The Cobra Candlestick (1928) aren't the best locked room mysteries the twenties produced, but have come across much, much worse from that decade (e.g. Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger, 1927). J.M. Walsh's "atmospheric mystery" The Hairpin Mystery (1926) and Henry Leverage's "high-stakes thriller" The Purple Limited (1927) seem to have some potential. It's their brand new edition of The Moving House of Foscaldo that made me bite again.

Before delving into this long lost, long forgotten detective novel, I should mention the curious, short publication history of The Cactus and The Moving House of Foscaldo.

Adey's Locked Room Murders names lawyer Bob Ellis as the detective of The Cactus, solving a stabbing in a locked room, whom previously appeared in two short stories, "Pawn to Queen's Eighth" (1910) and "The Twist of the Screw" (1912), published in The Popular Magazine as by "Daniel Steele." I checked and they appear to be the same character, but no idea why the short stories were published under a penname and the novel under his own name. The Cactus only appeared in the US and begins with an impossible murder in Greenwich Village, New York, which leads Ellis to Mexico. The Moving House of Foscaldo, a standalone, was serialized in The Elks magazine from October 1925 to February 1926 and published as a book only in the UK. So this probably contributed to them not getting reprinted over the past hundred years, but it also didn't help Chadwick simply stopped writing novels and even abandoned short stories by the end of the twenties. A shame as he seems to have been one of the better writers of the pre-and early Golden Age mystery with a healthy interest in locked rooms and impossible crimes. The two-parter, "Ellis in Search of a Feather," published in the January 15 and February 1, 1913, issues of The Popular Magazine, looks to be a locked room mystery. Chadwick's short stories needs further investigation, but, for now, let's take a look at his second and last detective novel.

The setting here is a lonely, wooded and cliff-bound island near the French coast, Island of Foscaldo, which has an old, Dutch-style windmill tower perched on a cliff as its dominating landmark – known as la maison mouvante, the Moving House. It stands "dizzily on the cliff's very edge" held in place by "two chain stays whose huge rusted links fastened back into the rocks." Count Foscaldo built the windmill-like structure following his escape to the remote island during the Reign of Terror of Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. So the Island of Foscaldo is shrouded in obscure, forgotten history, mysterious structures and scenery that belongs on the canvas of a Romanticists painting. That's brought Peer Rackstrom, a landscape painter, to the island and becomes deeply entangled in a series of increasingly mysterious and dangerous adventures.

It begins innocently enough when Rackstrom finds an ancient, weathered brass key with a barely legible legend, "XETGAMAINFECI," engraved on it. A key belonging to the Royal locksmith, Gamain, who betrayed King Louis XVI? And, perhaps, linked to the armoire de fer, or iron box, which "had been taken from the walls of the King's chamber" to be stashed away on the island. So, of course, he loses the key. Next he catches a glimpse of a beautiful woman on a sailboat who looked at him in surprise, "like some wild creature," picked up anchor and sailed away. What really sets the ball rolling is the arrival on the island is several men from Paris. Firstly, there's Inspector Auguste Prontout, Prefecture of Police, who has come to the island with his subordinate, Dirmoir, to arrest one of the most dangerous man in the country, Gabas. Wanted for murder and robbery in the Marie Lafitte case. Inspector Prontout enlists Rackstrom's help, but ends up getting a front row seat to an inexplicable, seemingly impossible vanishing-act.

One night, Rackstrom observes Gabas going inside the windmill, closely followed by Dirmoir, but only Gabas comes back out muttering a strange goodbye ("Ha! Dirmoir! Adieu"). Rackstrom goes inside expecting to find a crime scene, but after searching the place, top to bottom, concludes "the place was empty of any soul" except himself. Gabas could not have concealed the body, anywhere, because of "the tower's simple, rude, unfinished mode of interior construction" – in which "planking, timbers and everything was exposed to view." So how did the policeman disappear when Rackstrom saw him following Gabas inside through the only entrance, and exit, to the windmill tower? And without a sign, or trace, of a struggle!That's not the last time someone vanishes from the windmill nor was it the first time it happened.

A promising and, above all, surprising beginning recalling, or rather anticipating, the French mystery writers from the 1930s. Writers like Stanislas-André Steeman, Gaston Boca, Noel Vindry, Pierre Véry, Herbert & Wyl, but the second-half suggests, if Chadwick was in influenced by French mystery writers at all, that influence likely came from Gaston Leroux and Maurice Leblanc. Both parts surprised me. I expected tougher stuff from an All-American college athlete, who competed in the Olympics, like Hake Talbot's Rogan Kincaid in The Hangman's Handyman (1942). Not a novel of adventure and romance soaked in French romanticism living up to Véry's credo "what counts for an author" is "to save what has been able to remain in us as the child that we were" so "full of flaws, of changes of heart, of shadow and mystery." That becomes particularly true around the second-half when every resemblance to a traditional detective, even by French standards, mostly comes to an end. Mostly.

The second-half finds Rackstrom and the woman on the sailboat exploring, and getting themselves trapped, inside a cavern system, but their subterranean adventure is not as cliché, dated or hackneyed as it sounds. It actually has a modern touch as their ordeal plays out like a video game in which they need to explore, solve puzzles and collect items to unlock new areas helped by a series of diagrams drawn to map the caverns. Yes, the pattern emerging from the diagrams and mapping attempts can be taken as a hint. And, eventually, reveals the solution to a century old mystery that has largely gone unnoticed by history. I also liked the scene in which Gabas explains his strange backstory to Rackstrom claiming royal blood and being haunted by his ancestors. Not haunted by their ghosts, but by "inherited memories." Like I said, The Moving House of Foscaldo might appear dated at a glance, but Chadwick didn't rely on them to fill the pages of a serial. He really tried to do something with the story and succeeded admirably, definitely by 1920s standards. That doubly goes for the impossible crime element.

That bizarre, crumbling cliff-bound structure dominates the story, especially during the story's opening and closing stages. I mentioned in a previous review how the 1920s was the decade when the 1930s, Golden Age detective story was beginning to take shape and solidify, but that came with growing pain and the overall quality being all over the place – until roughly 1927, 1928, when some real progress was being made. The solution to the impossible disappearances, past and present, is far above the average for the time and shows Chadwick liked to make work of his impossible crimes and locked room puzzles. A perfect fit for this kind of story and much more satisfying than my practical half-baked armchair solution. It all makes for a highly readable, absorbing and atmospheric tale of adventure, romance, mystery and history.

Chadwick's The Moving House of Foscaldo is undoubtedly a novel of adventure and romance with detective story elements rather than a detective novel with a dash of adventure and romance, but, if you're looking for something off the beaten track, it comes highly recommended! Fingers crossed The Cactus is next to be reprinted by Serling Lake. And, hopefully, a few more of the obscure, choosier items on my special locked room wishlist.

Note for the curious: my half-baked, completely wrong armchair solution "cleverly" hinged on a simple principle of magic tricks and illusions. Everything that should make the trick more difficult for the magician/culprit actually makes it easier. Rackstrom claims the body could not be concealed owning to the nature of the ramshackle windmill, but what if he simply didn't search good enough? The windmill has as to be expected sail arms that have long ceased to revolve and the canvas had torn and sagged over time. What if one of these torn, sagging sails created a fold, or pouch, in which a body can be tugged away. This pouch can be accessed from the inside the mill by moving some of the loose timber aside to create a small opening to worm a body through, before putting the timber or planks back in place. That way, you can search the place, top to bottom, all day long without ever finding a body.

Stuff of Legends: C.M.B. vol. 3-4 by Motohiro Katou

Yes, I know, I know. The plan was to have gotten well on the way towards Q.E.D. vol. 50 and the crossover with C.M.B. out of the way, which once again got sidetracked, but this time I have a scapegoat an excuse – namely the "New Locked Room Library." So you can blame Alexander for organizing that massive distraction. That was last year. I intend to pick up where I left off with last years reviews of C.M.B. vol. 1-2 and Q.E.D. vol. 39-40 with a review of C.M.B. vol. 3-4, before finally tackling the crossover event between these sibling series. I recommend taking a look at the review of the first two volumes, if you need a refresher what this series is about.

The first of two stories from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 3, "Lost Relief," centers on the three rings, "C," "M," and "B," the three curators of the British Museum gifted to their 14-year-old apprentice, Sakaki Shinra. Whomever possesses one of the rings can count on plenty of funding and unfettered access to normally restricted archives for their research, archaeological digs or building up a collection or museum. So giving all three rings to one person, let alone a teenager, is unprecedented in the 200 year old tradition.

"Lost Relief" introduces a rival for the young museum curator and amateur detective in Shaw Bentley, head of research at the British Museum, who believes Professor Stan, Professor Ray and Professor Morris had no right to hand the rings over Shinra ("those rings have been demoted to a toy for some kid in the east"). So "the youngest researcher in history" is determined to pry one of the rings, but the only way to officially come into possession of a ring is if Shinra gifts him one. Shaw travels to Japan to visit Shinra at his hidden museum to propose a sporting challenge for one of his rings. A month ago, a ship was intercepted with a cargo of stolen historical artifacts, en route to a shady collector, which included a stone relief illustrating an Aztec sacrificial ceremony – except the part depicting the part of the altar has gone missing. Smugglers claimed it was complete, but when it arrived at the Japanese warehouse for inspection, the altar piece was missing.

Shaw proposes that the first one to find the missing piece wins. If he finds it, Shinra has to give him one of the rings, but if Shinra finds it first, Shaw will give him a solid gold statue he found in Columbia for his museum. Shinra even sweetens the deal with a challenge of his own. In case the missing piece isn't found, but Shaw can deduce what's depicted on top of the altar, Shinra will accept defeat. This story is obviously intended to introduce the characters of Shaw Bentley and his bratty, personal chef, Linda, while filling in some of the details of Shinra's backstory. That being said, the problem of the missing relief piece is not half bad and, more importantly, perfectly solvable for the keen-eyed armchair detective. So a good, fun opener of the third volume.

By the way, Shaw called Shinra's museum "a warehouse of trash" that's "full of strange children's junk," which is not true, but also betrays a body without a romantic bone in it and perhaps even lacking a soul. I would love to climb a tree to get into Shinra's museum (it's only entrance/exit) to roam around all those displays with ancient artifacts or horsey-ride the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

The second story of this volume, "Modern Legend," is one of those strange, character-driven, human-shaped puzzle stories I have come to associate with Q.E.D. A story playing on Japanese urban legends like "Hanako-san of the Toilet" or "The Slit-Mouthed Woman."

Meiyuu Private High School becomes a hotbed for gruesome, terrifying urban legends about bodies being found in horrific circumstances ("a dead body found in the mountains... a body beaten by the branches of a willow... and a body buried in a bamboo grove..."). Shinra sets his classmate searching for the person behind the urban legends when he suggested the stories might have originated from one and the same person. This leads them to the crusty owner of a music store, his shed and talk about a bone-colored boat. But is he's hiding some horrific crime inside that shed? Meanwhile, Nanase Tatsuki, the Kana Mizuhara to Shinra's Sou Touma, learns more about Shinra's family and circumstances. And at the same time trying to civilize socialize him. Another good, fun little mystery with an interesting solution (ROT13: gung'f bar jnl gb fraq fbzrbar n zrffntr, V fhccbfr), but not as solvable (for western readers anyway) as the previous one with the spotlight being on Shinra's character and background. It was really sad seeing Shinra cleaning his museum, open its doors and waiting for visitors who never came. But a good story to close out this volume.

C.M.B. vol. 4 comprises of a single, long story, "Judean Fortune," which is best described as Dan Brown getting the shin honkaku treatment. A international despite has arisen from a potential discovery in the Roman Colosseum, Italy, which was called in by special investigator working on historical sites. A special investigator working for the not so catchy named Private Historical Site Investigation Company, run by Jamie Charles, who was hired by Israel to investigate certain claims regarding a mysteries treasure. Her investigator called in to report he had actually found the treasure, "a Judean treasure," but got himself killed in the ruins of the Colosseum under very mysterious, borderline impossible, circumstances – impaled through the chest with a trident. The place where he was murdered makes it incredibly difficult to effectively wield a trident as a murder weapon. Even if he was attacked from above. Not a full-blown locked room murder, but enough to make for an intriguing howdunit with a visually pleasing solution. The victim also left something that functions as a dying message regarding the treasure.

However, the case started a diplomatic incident between Italy, Israel, the Vatican and the Knights of Malta. So the British Museum is assigned with the investigation as a neutral, third party and they delegated the investigation to the keeper of the three CMB rings. Shinra nearly causes another international incident when he initially refuses the assignment, but agrees when he gets to bring Nanase Tatsuki along to Italy.

"Judean Fortune" basically is "Lost Relief" on a much bigger, grander scale and pretty fun adventure mystery with a couple of clever touches. Most notably, the solution to the quasi-impossible murder at the ruins which has a solution that's just perfect for the visual detective story. There's a second, quasi-impossible situation when they get attacked at night in the streets of Rome by an ax-wielding knight in armor, but, when the police investigates the site of the attack the next day, no strike marks from the ax are found on the walls. Neither are full-blown impossible crimes, but once again, they make for a couple of visually appealing howdunits. The historical plot-thread about the long-lost, hidden treasure has an answer of epic historical proportions with potential world destabilizing consequences. So it ends with (ROT13) gur jubyr guvat trggvat pbirerq onpx hc, but nothing to take away from this extremely fun, richly-plotted historical adventure mystery. Although it cannot be denied that the rich plot would have been more at home in a Ruritanian setting than one resembling the real world.

So have now read the first four volumes, but think I can see the most important difference between C.M.B. and Q.E.D. Katou used the shonen manga format in Q.E.D. as a vehicle for the detective story and the detective story as a vehicle for a shonen manga in C.M.B., if that makes any sense. Which is why Q.E.D. feels more grounded and realistic compared to C.M.B. with its less than realistic premise and a protagonist who's the personification of Peter Pan Syndrome. Sou Touma is just an introverted math genius and teenage detective. You remember the type from high school. But both series compliment each other splendidly. And fascinating how they both use their premises and medium to find new ways to tell a good, old-fashioned detective stories. So very much look forward to their big crossover story, finishing Q.E.D. and exploring C.M.B. further in the near future.

The Communicating Door and Other Stories (1923) by Wadsworth Camp

Wadsworth Camp was an American reporter, playwright and a noteworthy, often overlooked mystery writer from the 1910s, when the genre began to gradually move away from the Doylean era and rivals of Sherlock Holmes, who wrote most of his detective novels during the First World War – which were lean years for the genre. During those war years, Camp produced several, what can be called, proto-Golden Age mysteries. Similar to Frederic Arnold Kummer's The Green God (1911) and Isabel Ostrander's The Clue in the Air (1917), Camp's House of Fear (1916) and The Abandoned Room (1917) are in many ways ahead of their time, but, in other ways, hopelessly chained to their period. A reminder that the detective story, as we have come to know it today, was still very much a work-in-progress during the 1910s and '20s.

However, the best of these early, transitional mysteries (not penned by G.K. Chesterton or R. Austin Freeman) aren't without (historical) interest or completely lacking as detective novels. Camp is one of those fascinating, early pre-GAD mystery writers whose work read like a direct ancestor of John Dickson Carr, Hake Talbot and Paul Halter.

House of Fear takes place in an abandoned, decaying and reputedly haunted theater where the resident ghost of a dead actor prefers to play his part to empty seats, but gets disturbed when a theatrical producer wants to revive it – starting a procession impossible incidents and unnatural deaths. The Abandoned Room is thick with atmosphere reminiscent of Talbot's The Hangman's Handyman (1942) and Rim of the Pit (1944) with the dead ceasing to be dead upon being touched and other apparently supernatural happenings. Camp, of course, never reached their heights as a mystery writer, but liked them enough to seek out more. Camp was not the most prolific of mystery writers with choices being limited to Sinister Island (1915) and a collection of short stories.

The Communicating Door and Other Stories (1923) is listed online as a collection of seven ghost stories and the reason why I didn't give it much attention, until a reliable source identified them as detective stories. Several sounded promising enough. So on the big pile it went.

Just one more thing before delving into this collection... it takes a few stories to get to the really good stuff. So bear with me.

The collections opens with "The Communicating Door," originally published in the September 15, 1913, publication of The Popular Magazine, which can probably be blamed for getting the collection tagged as a bundle of ghost stories. Dawson Roberts, a young lawyer, is determined to rescue Evangeline Ashley from her husband, John Ashley, but he has tucked her away in Ashley House – a large, rambling place in the remote parts of northern Florida. Roberts is not deterred and travels to Florida to find a pallid, haggard and ghost haunted Evangeline at Ashley House. She only want to go with him, if he can proves she has only been imagining things ("...find a natural explanation"). This involves a ghost story surrounding one of her husbands long-dead ancestors and a communicating door locked, and rusted, shut for the better part of a century. "The Communicating Door" reads like the setup of one of Camp's locked room novels and concludes with several seemingly impossible incidents and an unnatural death. Camp impressively gives answers in short order, "everything can be normally explained," but leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the events have a natural or supernatural explanation. A short story with timely charm, even if it was already a good decade out-of-date by 1913.

A note for the curious: "The Communicating Door" is another example of Camp's detective fiction being a direct ancestor of Carr. Carr himself successfully stitched together the detective and ghost story in his short story "Blind Man's Hood" (1934) and the standalone novel The Burning Court (1937).

"Hate," originally published in the April 3, 1920, publication of Collier's and is a departure from Camp's usual murders in old, decaying haunted building to tell a crime story of the Roaring Twenties. David Hume and Edward Felton, "rival proprietors of secret and luxurious gambling houses," having being going at it over a beautiful chores girl, Baby Lennox. The so-called "politer underworld" agreed one would inevitably put the other out of the way. Hume fires the first proverbial shots by pulling a dirty trick on Felton placing him in jail, but bail is posted and Felton is determined to kill Hume. Camp's series-detective, Jim Garth, is present to see the first attempt fail and hear Hume promise, "when you get too much for me I won't try any cheap gun play" ("the cops will only wonder at the beautiful floral offering I'll send for your funeral..."). Felton thinks that's a splendid idea and Hume is found the next day gassed to death in his room. A murder-disguised-as-suicide with a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing towards Felton, but the courtroom wizardry of a young, hungry prosecutor secured a conviction – sending Felton to the death house to be electrocuted. After the verdict, the prosecutor begins to second guess himself and begs Garth to find out if he send the right man to the chair.

Right up until the end, "Hate" is not a bad 1920s crime story with a reverse take on the locked room mystery ("...suicides by gas, as a rule, lock their doors and are content without such extras as chloroform") and some courtroom dramatics, but the conclusion is a muddled, open-ended mess. The whole story is concerned with getting a confession from Felton, whether he's guilty or not and never bothers with the truth. Did he kill Hume or was it somebody else? Camp never gives an answer while an obvious solution is staring everyone in the face. Hume was already dying from an incurable disease. Everything suggested to me Hume killed himself and left behind evidence of murder to frame Felton, but botched it as the evidence under normal circumstances would never have resulted in a guilty verdict or even get to trial. Only a young, hungry prosecutor determined to make a name for himself ensured the plan worked. That would given the story a pitch-black ending as the prosecution hammered on "this revolting idea of the murder of a dying man to satisfy an evil vengeance before nature could interfere." So this story can be filed under "Missed Opportunities."

"The Dangerous Tavern," originally published in the July 24, 1920, publication of Collier's, hands Jim Garth "one of the queerest cases" of his career. A young, barefoot, half-dressed woman was found nearly frozen to death on a country road near a place called Newtown. The trail leads Garth to a remote, deserted and inhospitable tavern where he engages in a nighttime battle of cat-and-mouse with several dangerous criminals who don't shy away from murder. A fun, lively gangster story, but not really my thing.

"The Haunted House," originally published in the January 8, 1921, publication of Collier's, is the first truly good story from this collection. Jim Garth is asked by Simon Allen, an ex-poet, to come to the lonely village of Ardell to prove he's not the victim of self-hallucination. Simon lost his wife three years ago and, ever since, "the house has been full of Helen" and her presence is beginning to take a toll on his sister – who lives in the house with their invalided father. Simon knew Helen was unhappy in Ardell and longed for the city, which is why he's guilt ridden over her death and refuses to live in the house. Whenever he has to stay the night, Helen never fails to put in a ghostly appearance. So what's behind these haunting, domestic events? Garth has to take on the role of John Bell instead of Sherlock Holmes to get to the bottom of this case, which leads him down the dark, gloomy family vault. A very nicely-done, well-handled surprise is waiting for both Garth and the reader. Not to mention a good, not wholly unoriginal solution that wouldn't be out-of-place in a detective story from 1931.

So an excellent short story all around and, together with House of Fear and a short story later in this collection, Camp's best to the early Golden Age detective story. "The Haunted House" is another example of how Camp reminds of Carr. This time, the story recalled my favorite radio-play by Carr, "The Dead Sleep Lightly" (1942), which has one of my favorite lines, "but the dead sleep lightly... and they can be lonely too." Camp is a bit more wordy than Carr, but "Helen's only lonely... she wants company" ("it's wicked of you to be afraid of her") and "you wouldn't let her go when she was alive, Simon, you can't be cross with her for staying now that she's dead" landed just the same. I don't think Camp has ever been mentioned as a possible influence before, but wouldn't be surprised if a young Carr had read Camp's novels and short stories.

For example, "Defiance," published in the December 24, 1921, publication of Collier's, is another short story full with Carrian vibes and the damned cussedness of all things general – especially the setup. Dr. Jimmy Wilmot is visited one evening Stacy Baldwin, a young scoundrel, who has a bullet wound and a strange story to tell. When he arrived home that evening, someone was hiding behind the curtains with a revolver and fired a shot, but Baldwin carries a loaded cane and struck the arm behind the flash ("...if I didn't break a bone I gave a beastly bruise"). So he'll be on the look out for anyone with his arm in a sling. At the same time another patient arrives. A veiled woman with a beastly bruise on her arm and circumstances lead the doctor to discovering her identity, Anna Baldwin. The wife of Stacy Baldwin. What's worse, Dr. Wilmost has always loved Anna. Now he had unwittingly "delivered her helpless into the hands of her vicious husband." I don't Camp pulls it off as good as Carr would have done, but still a pretty solid, early Golden Age detective story from a writer who often appears to belong to a different era.

No original publication date or magazine appearance is known for the next story, "Open Evidence" (1923?), which could mean it was previously published under a different title or this is its first appearance in print. But whatever the case may be, it's unjustly forgotten, overlooked short story. Camp's best piece of detective fiction. A fully-fledged, Golden Age locked room mystery complete with false-solutions and a detective anticipating both Philo Vance and Ellery Queen. More importantly, the solution might be a first. I'll get to that in a minute.

The story takes place not in an old, dark and decaying building, but on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue office building where a writer, named Hudson, is kept from his work by the telephone ringing in the doctor's office next door. And it has been going on for twenty minutes. So goes to the janitor to complain, but, when he looks through the mail slot, they start to break down the door. They find the doctor lying on the floor, stabbed with one of his own scalpels, but the door is locked and bolted on the inside. However, the connecting door opens into Hudson's tiny workroom and only he knows nobody left through that door. Something that looks very suspicious and immediately calls in the help of a private investigator, Parsons, who looks more like a dandy than a private detective. Parsons draws up two dummy cases before revealing the real murderer and locked room-trick ("I will show you a more obvious exit"). That locked room-trick has, as of now, some historical significance (SPOILER/ROT13): n dhrfgvba nebfr fbzr lrnef ntb ubj bevtvany gur fbyhgvba gb gur frpbaq vzcbffvoyr zheqre va serrzna jvyyf pebsgf fhqqra qrngu jnf va avargrra guvegl-gjb, juvpu unf fvapr orpbzr fbzrguvat bs na byq qbqtr. Vg srryf yvxr vg zhfg unir orra hfrq orsber fhqqra qrngu, ohg abobql pbhyq pbzr hc jvgu na rneyvre rknzcyr. Ubjrire, V abgrq ng gur gvzr na rneyvre rknzcyr, be gjb, cebonoyl rkvfgf va na bofpher fubeg fgbel sebz gur gjragvrf. V guvax guvf bar dhnyvsvrf. Gur gevpx vf nqzvggrqyl n ybat-jnl-ebhaq irefvba bs gur gevpx, ohg abg gbb qvssrerag naq npuvrirf gur fnzr rssrpg (zheqrere fghzoyvat vagb gur ebbz nsgre gur ybpxrq qbbe vf oebxra bcra). So, you anthologists out there, take note of this unjustly overlooked locked room treasure from the early Golden Age. Same goes for Max Rittenberg's "The Invisible Bullet" (1914) and Laurence Clarke's "Flashlights" (1918).

The seventh and final story, "The Obscure Move," was originally published in the May, 1915, issue of Adventure and is a fun, lighthearted and warm story of crime and adventure. Morgan is a successful private detective, "commonsense and a sense of humor were his own stock in trade," who specialized in tracking down swindlers. The latest crook he's hunting down is a man named Duncan, of the Duncan Investment Company, who had fled with large sums of investment money. Duncan "revealed the attributes of an eel" as he keeps dodging Morgan, while the pursuing Morgan forces Duncan to turn in his tracks several times. A cat-and-mouse chase leading to a logging camp in Florida where they both get lost in the swamps. So they have to survive together, until they can find their way back to the camp. Such an ordeal allows for some misplaced sympathy to grow on Margon's part for someone who ruined numerous people, but not a bad story to round out this collection.

The Communicating Door and Other Stories is the mixed bag of tricks to be expected from an obscure, 1920s collection of only seven short stories, but here it can be put down to personal taste. Not a the lack of quality. "The Haunted House" and "Open Evidence" are the standouts of the collection and my personal favorites with "Defiance" following behind at a distance. "The Dangerous Tavern" and "The Obscure Move" are both well written, but not for me. Only the first two stories, "The Communicating Door" and "Hate," came up short, but even they had their moments. Not to be overlooked, the best stories showed Camp was not hopelessly shackled to the turn-of-the-century period of the genre and could write fully-fledged, Golden Age mysteries. And had he continued to write stories like "Open Evidence," Camp would not have been half as obscure as he's today. Very much worth a look!

The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) by Clayton Rawson

Recently, I reviewed the last of the unread Great Merlini mysteries that resided on the big pile, namely The Headless Lady (1940), which proved to be surprising in just how radically different it's from Clayton Rawson's better-known Death from a Top Hat (1938) and "From Another World" (1948) – two classics which gave him the reputation of a locked room artisan. The Headless Lady dispenses with the locked room murders and impossible disappearances in favor of cast-iron alibis, dodgy identifies and an escalations staged around a three-ring circus. In spirit, The Headless Lady stands closer to the works of Christopher Bush and Brian Flynn than John Dickson Carr or Hake Talbot.

The Headless Lady left me with two thoughts. I already mentioned in that review it left me with the idea that Rawson's biggest contribution was not his bag of locked room-tricks, but creating the archetype of the magician detective in the Great Merlini. What I didn't bring up is how the plot almost suggested, or revealed, Rawson's background and ethics as a magician hamstrung his abilities to deliver satisfying solutions for his locked room scenarios. Reluctant to give away trade secrets. Rawson appeared to be more comfortable handling a non-impossible crime story, toying around with alibis and identities, than a grand-scale, Carr-like locked room mystery. Such as the impossible crime extravaganza Death from a Top Hat or the atrociously bad No Coffin for the Corpse (1942).

So decided to take another look at the second novel in the Great Merlini series, The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939), to test that fan theory hypothesis. I read The Footprints on the Ceiling ages ago in an old, dated Dutch translation (De voetstappen op het plafond) and remember practically nothing of the overall story or plot – except for the upside down footprints and some other (minor) impossibilities. Hey, subverting your expectations is not my job.

First of all, The Footprints on the Ceiling is a tightly packed, complicatedly-plotted mystery piling incident, on incident, right up till the end. I'm going to gloss over a lot of details as encapsulating everything that goes on is next to impossible.

The story begins with Ross Harte reading a curious notice in the newspaper, "WANTED TO RENT: Haunted House, preferably in rundown condition. Must be adequately supplied with interesting ghost," which leads him to the Magic Shop. And from there the story quickly begins to resemble a story of old-world adventure and harum-scarum. The shop assistant, Burt, tells him Merlini is away at the moment, but the magician detective has been looking for him and investigating the spooky history of Skelton Island, which is a small island in the East River – "a stone's throw from Manhattan." Skelton Island has a "positively lurid" history of piracy, sunken treasure and a haunting. In 1850, Captain Arnold Skelton, "an eccentric, fiery-tempered old boy," appeared out of nowhere to settle down in New York. Rumors at the time opined the old sea-devil bought Skelton Island and built his house with pirate loot. The Skeltons were never able to shake-off their pirate legacy, but instead became rather proud of it over the generations ("adds an interesting spot of color to the ancestral tree"). There are still three Skeltons living on the island, Linda together with her two half-brothers, Arnold and Floyd, which has become a hotspot for spiritualism, treasure hunters and other criminal activities. However, the spiritual star attraction is not the noisy ghost of Captain Skelton, but Colonel Watrous' prize medium, Madam Rappourt, who both previously appeared in Death from a Top Hat.

Colonel Watrous is a psychic researcher of two decades and believed Madam Rappourt to be genuine article. And wrote extensively on her in his latest book Modern Mediums. Going as far as saying that "psychical research can rest its whole case on her phenomena," but doubt has began to set in ("she's up to something even stranger than usual") and wants an outside opinion. So turned to the Great Merlini to sound out the medium. Linda Skelton happened to be greatly interested in psychic matters and asked the Colonel to bring along Madam Rappourt when requesting permission to investigate the deserted, reputedly haunted house on the island. A séance is being planned that gives Merlini the opportunity he needs. Ross Harte is instructed to go the island with his camera "loaded with infra-red film" and a loaded .32 automatic.

Now all of that sounds conventional enough for a Golden Age novel. A mystery novel covering everything from a fraudulent medium, séance shenanigans and an isolated island to the figure of the Great Detective trying to disentangle a tangle of Grade-A alibis, seemingly inexplicable occurrences and a very subtle murderer. This is, however, only the introduction to the environs of the story and some of the colorful characters dwelling there. When the plot kicks off, it gives the strong impression Rawson patterned The Footprints on the Ceiling after Carter Dickson's The Unicorn Murders (1935) and The Punch and Judy Murders (1936). Before he can even get to the island, Ross Harte's suitcase gets switched for one crammed with "funny-looking old coins, worn and wobbly about the edges" and inscribed "GEORGIUS III—DEL GRATIA" – dated 1779. But loses this treasure as soon as he gained it when he gets blackjacked from behind. Everything begins to rapidly accelerate once they land on Skelton Island.

Merlini, Harte and the Colonel go to the haunted house to inspect it when they hear footsteps upstairs, but the only one they find upstairs is Linda Skelton. She has been dead for hours from cyanide poison. So what happened to person they heard walking upstairs and where did the intruder disappeared to as the only way out is a forty feet drop to the dark river below? A sudden fire breaks out in the cellar. The phone line is cut and someone scuttled all the boats, which marooned them on the island. Not to mention the curious footprints on the ceiling of the crime scene, "one uncanny, inexplicable footprint after another," stopping "directly above the open window and the sheer 40-foot drop outside" ("an upside-down procession of surrealist impossibilities"). Believe it or not, this is still only a small sample of everything Rawson throws in the direction of his characters and readers. A naked, unidentified body of a man is discovered in a locked hotel room who died of the bends and shootout happens towards the end with one of the bullets magically changing direction mid-air.

So, on paper, The Footprints on the Ceiling is as much an impossible crime extravaganza as Death from a Top Hat, but with key differences. One, the impossibilities are not overplayed and treated like the small puzzle pieces of a bigger, overall picture. That helped to manage expectations. And, two, none of the tricks really hinge on any type of magic-tricks or techniques. Rawson constructed the plot entirely around the gentle art of misdirection and the principles of deception ("...nothing more than psychology turned upside down and inside out"). Without the risk of breaking the magician's code, Rawson put those minor impossibilities to better use than those from Death from a Top Hat and the footprints-trick even allowed for a flicker of inspired clueing you normally find only in an Agatha Christie or Christianna Brand story (SPOILER/ROT13: jura bar bs gur punenpgref bofreirf nobhg gur sbbgcevagf, “fher, gur thl gung znqr ’rz vf gjryir srrg gnyy naq pna jnyx ba uvf unaqf”). Like I said, the impossibilities here are only pieces of a larger, incredibly jumbled puzzle that, perhaps, has too much going on with too many independently moving parts. It's easy to lose track of all that's going on on the island and to pull the plot-threads together in the end without dropping one, or two, would have been impressive feat. But to do with a solution almost bordering on the believable is the work of master. Not a second-stringer. So either that old, crummy Dutch translation was rubbish or my taste had not yet matured or been fine-tuned enough to appreciate this gem.

On top of all of that, Rawson peppered the story with fascinating tidbits of the arcane and macabre. The dead man in the hotel room who died of the bends provides an opportunity to discuss "compressed air as a murder device," how it can be done, impracticable as it may be, as well as pointing out its horrific effects – "it carbonates the blood, literally turns the victim into a human soda-water bottle." What about the reverse, death by implosion, which could happen to the hardhat divers of the past. If the surface pump would let the air pressure go, the tons of water pressure would squeeze a diver right up into his helmet and taken out with a spoon ("divers have facetiously referred to the results of a squeeze as 'strawberry jam'"). Another chapter delves into the subject of poisons and makes an inventory of all the available poisons on the island with final tally coming to thirty ("this case is getting to be a toxicologist's nightmare"), which makes the island something of a poisoner's paradise. And a fascinating sidetrack in the forgotten history of the so-called Blue Men. In earlier days, doctors prescribed silver nitrate for stomach ulcers or silver salts for epilepsy, but they turned their patients skin permanently blue. Some were condemned to earn their living as freak show attractions ("billed as The Great What-Is-It From Mars").

It all makes for a rich storytelling adding to a crazy, but surprisingly lucidly-plotted detective story. Something that had no right to work or even be successful, but, somehow, someway, Rawson pulled it off with flying colors. The Footprints on the Ceiling might very well be the best trick Rawson ever played on his readers and is the detective novel he should be remembered for today (together with The Headless Lady). Highly recommended!