People vs. Withers and Malone (1963) by Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice

You know, I love a good detective trope as much as the next person and my enduring, tediously documented obsession with the locked room mystery has been called a "cause for concern," but they say that because they don't realize there's a trope even more potent than the impossible crime – a trope rarer than musgravite. The classic of literary guilty pleasures, the crossover. While not as rare in other fields of fiction, there have been very few genuine crossovers in detective fiction over its nearly two-hundred year run.

H.C. Bailey allowed his two series detectives, Reggie Fortune and Joshua Clunk, to make occasional cameos in each others cases, but never truly worked with, or against, each other. A panel of famous detective characters appear in Brian Flynn's The Case of the Painted Ladies (1940) to help out Anthony Bathurst, but their appearance is more in the way of a cameo than a crossover. Same goes for William Clerihew from H. Warner Allen's Mr. Clerihew, Wine Merchant (1933) briefly popping up in E.C. Bentley's Trent's Own Case (1936) to advise Philip Trent. So one of the first true and truly effective crossovers is probably Patrick Quentin's Black Widow (1952) pitting the innocently framed Peter Duluth against the tenacious Lt. Trant from Death and the Maiden (1939).

After the 1950s, Edward D. Hoch pooled some of his many series detectives on special occasions. Dr. Sam Hawthorne meets Ben Snow in "The Problem of the Haunted Tepee" (1990) and Captain Leopold crosses paths with Nick Velvet in "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" (1991). A writer who made serious work of crossovers in the (modern) crime-and detective story is Bill Pronzini. Pronzini's Nameless Detective has teamed up with Marcia Muller's Sharon McComb in Double (1984) and the short story "Cache and Carry" (1988), but their best crossover is Beyond the Grave (1986) in which Elena Oliverez from Muller's The Tree of Death (1983) comes across a historical mystery from 1894 involving Carpenter and Quincannon – the turn-of-the-century San Francisco gumshoes. Even before that, Pronzini's Nameless Detective found himself working alongside Collin Wilcox's Lt. Frank Hastings (Twospot, 1978). There are, of course, the missed opportunities. Carter Dickson and John Rhode's Fatal Decent (1939) not being a crossover between H.M. and Dr. Priestley or Rex Stout and Ian Fleming discussing the idea of James Bond, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin having a meetup that never happened ("Bond would have gotten all the girls").

So, while there have been few real crossovers, those few have been generally good, but even then, they're hardly known as crossover classics. In fact, the only work really known and celebrated for its quality as a crossover is a collection of half a dozen short stories, Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice's People vs. Withers and Malone (1963).

Stuart Palmer and "Craig Rice," a penname of Georgiana Randolph, were not only friends, but two of the brightest lights of the American detective story. Palmer debuted Miss Hildegarde Withers, "schoolteacher by profession and meddlesome old snoop by avocation," who made her first appearance in The Penguin Pool Murder (1932) giving the whole concept of spinster sleuth a bit more bite – which made her my favorite. Rice, the Queen of the Screwball Mystery, was said to have been "virtually the only woman writer of the distinctively American type of mystery, the tough, hard-boiled school that combines hard drink, hilarity, and homicide." She created my favorite shady lawyer, John J. Malone, who always right in the middle of some boozy, madcap antics, heavy drinking and solving crimes ("...usually by pure accident while chasing through saloons after some young woman..."). I take these two over Miss Marple and Perry Mason anytime!

Nobody remembers, exactly, who came up with the idea to pair the prim spinsters with the messy Chicago attorney. Rice thought it was Palmer. Palmer believed it was the editor "Ellery Queen." Queen named Palmer. Whoever came up with the idea, Palmer and Rice collaborated through correspondence on four stories that appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but the last two stories were posthumous collaborations published after Rice's untimely death in 1957. Palmer wrote and parsed the last two stories together from "some Craigean scrap or Ricean fragment" in their letters and notes. Their partnership proved to be what you want and hope a crossover to be (i.e. not just a gimmick). While in a way different mystery writers with opposite characters as detectives, Palmer and Rice's style and plotting techniques proved to be far from incompatible with Malone and Withers playing off each other like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin at their best.

I first read this collection, years ago, in a Dutch translation (badly) titled Een advocaat en kwade zaken (A Lawyer and an Evil Business), but always wanted to reread it in English. So why not take a look at these six madcap capers during these final days of the year.

"Once Upon a Train," originally titled "Loco Motive," first appeared in the October, 1950, issue of EQMM and finds John J. Malone celebrating the "miraculous acquittal" of his client, Stephen Larsen. A machine politician who had been caught with his hand in the municipal till and Malone is now waiting for him to settle his much needed fee ("...two months' back office rent..."), but Larsen has boarded the Super-Century for New York ("next stop Paris or Rio"). Malone is in hot pursuit and boards the train, however, there's no trace of Larsen or the beautiful redhead he spotted. He meets someone else, a tall, angular woman "who somehow suggested a fairly well-dressed scarecrow" with a floral hat resembling "a well-kept grave," Miss Hildegarde Withers – where off to the races! Their first meeting aboard the Super-Century train is a crossover worthy event that keeps getting better when a body turns up in Miss Withers' compartment. Malone and Miss Withers are the wrong detectives to try such a stunt on, because they immediately start tempering with evidence by moving the body back and forth between their compartments to delay discovery. Not only is "Once Upon a Train" a very entertaining story, putting two detectives from different series on the same page, but the plot is solid with a solution answering the question why the body was undressed and where the money (including Malone's fee) was hidden on the train. So a fantastic story all around!

"Cherchez la Frame" was originally published in the June, 1951, issue of EQMM and brings Malone and his secretary, Maggie, to Beverley Hills, California, on a discreet assignment. Joe Vastrelli hired Malone to track down his estranged ex-wife, Nina, who had abandoned him to become an actress and wanted to know if she wanted him back. Malone, "a pushover for a sentimental story," accepted and took the opportunity to meet back up with Miss Withers, but Maggie has to keep his date and confides in Miss Withers her worry Malone is getting himself into trouble. Not without a reason. Malone finds Nina's body in the bedroom of his bungalow hotel with his own, distinctively hand painted, necktie knotted tightly around her neck. Like I said before, Malone and Withers are the wrong detectives to try a frame job on. This time, the killer did a better job than the previous murderer ("a lovely, hand-painted frame") and it looks like Malone is in serious trouble towards the end ("...I'm licked"). That being said, Malone and Withers carry this story as the murderer, motive and method are obvious from the start. So not as good as the first, but still a thoroughly entertaining story mixing mayhem with murder.

"Autopsy and Eva" was first published in the August, 1954, issue of EQMM and opens with Malone ready to embark for Honolulu on holiday, "just collected a fat fee," but Miss Withers drops by to spoil the fun – announcing "we're thoroughly mixed up in another murder case." Miss Withers goes on to explain about the Ryan murder case in which an army colonel returning from Korea was found killed in his bedroom. So it's assumed the returning Ryan found his wife, Eva, together with her loves, got overpowered and shot with his own service pistol. Miss Withers has her doubts and done some sleuthing on herself, which seems to have borne fruit. Now she wants Malone to present when hearing the people who responded on her ad requesting information. Of course, one of them practically ends up dead on Malone's doorstep. Miss Withers casually informs Malone she's been harboring the fugitive Eva Ryan in her spare bedroom for the past four days. So this another entertaining outing for the two disaster creating murder magnets, but, once again, Malone and Withers carry the story.

"Rift in the Loot," originally published in the April, 1955, issue of EQMM, is not a detective story, but one of those thriller-ish gangster stories from the pulp magazine of previous decades. Malone and Withers get roped in to retrieve the hidden loot from a deadly robbery, which appears to be easy enough, but complications and corpses abound. Fun but minor stuff.

"Withers and Malone, Brain-Stormers," first published in the February, 1959, issue of EQMM, is the first, of two, Withers and Malone stories Palmer wrote following the Rice's untimely death in 1957. Malone again finds himself in deeper hole than the previous time. Nancy Jorgens had a secret relationship with Paul Bedford, of the canned-beef Bedfords, who got her pregnant and told her to go see some shady doctor. So she turned to Malone to bring a paternity suit against Bedford, but Bedford fought back veraciously and brought in a whole parade of men who "swore they had enjoyed the favors of my fair client." Fortunately, this resulted in a hung jury, but, while Malone was moving for a new trial, Nancy got arrested for forging Paul Bedford's name a $25,000 check. She claims the check came in the mail and thought it legit, but the D.A. is out for blood. And even Malone is the target. Even worse, Nancy skipped town and Malone turns Miss Withers telling her, "we've got to find Bedford before Nancy finds him." So, more or less, standard fare for this crossover series, but the ending elevates it a bit closer to the first story. Malone finds himself in court as a fellow conspirator, but uses his Perry Mason-like courtroom theatrics and wizardry to conclude the case during their bail hearing. These last two stories are a bit longer than the first four, but Palmer put them to good use here!

"Withers and Malone, Crime-Busters," originally published in the November, 1963, issue of EQMM, finds Malone in an even more trouble than the last time. Malone always boasts that he never lost a client, but his latest client was sentenced to death. Walter "Junior" Coleman, playboy socialite, stood accused of killing his secret girlfriend, Jeanine, outside Le Jazz Hot with his car and received a life sentence at the first trial. Malone got him a new trial and a death sentence, but Malone himself is in potential legal trouble and potentially faces bribery charges. That's not even considering the devastating prize-tag attached to it, a bribed witness who has bailed and Junior already sitting in the condemned cell – entirely resigned to his fate. And a potential clue, or lead, lost in the foggy mist of a legendary hangover. Miss Withers came as soon as she heard the bad news ("welcome to the wake"), but they first dig themselves even deeper into trouble before they start digging themselves out again. A highlight of the story is when Malone ends up in the hospital, one leg raised high in traction, and Miss Withers has to disguise herself as a nurse to speak with him. So another fun, incredibly entertaining story to close out the story, marred only by a rather obvious murderer spoiling an interesting take on an age-old motive with legal complications.

I think "Withers and Malone, Brain-Stormers" and "Withers and Malone, Crime-Busters" probably would have made for a great novel and punctuation to the collaboration had they been merged together. Two cases simultaneously exploding in Malone's face with Miss Withers coming to the rescue (Welcome to the Wake would have been a good title).

So, all in all, Palmer and Rice's People vs. Withers and Malone is best described as the detective story's equivalent of an amusement park ride and probably best read as an episodic novel rather than a short story collection. I think only "Once Upon a Train" can stand on its own as a detective story with the first meeting between the two Malone and Withers making it a very special short story indeed. Malone and Withers carry the remaining stories from start to finish and they're the reason to read this unique team up between two detectives from different writers. There you have my rare recommendations purely on the strength of character. A Christmas miracle only a few days late!

Notes for the curious: People vs. Withers and Malone is not the only crossover in Palmer and Rice's work, which even extends to the detective fiction by Anthony Boucher and Denis Green. Firstly, Malone has an off-page cameo in Palmer's Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and briefly appears in the 1946 episode "The Double Diamond" from Boucher and Green's radio serial The Casebook of Gregory Hood. Gregory Hood is also linked to the Sister Ursula series through the Derringer Society from Boucher's Rocket to the Morgue (1942) and the Gregory Hood episode "The Derringer Society" (1946). Note that the Thrilling Detective Website mentions an untitled, 1948 crossover episode in which Hood appears alongside Sam Spade from the radio show The Adventures of Sam Spade. I don't remember if Fergus O'Breen or Nick Noble were ever alluded to/made cameos in the Hood or Sister Ursula series, but their inclusion would be the finishing touch to this extended pocket universe of detectives.

Anyway, I don't know if this going to be the last one of the year or one more gets squeezed in, but if this is the last one, I wish you all a happy new year and best wishes for 2026!

A Challenger Appears: C.M.B. vol. 5-6 by Motohiro Katou

Three months ago, I finished Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series with my review of vol. 50 and compiled "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50" as a follow-up to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25" shortly after – decided to take a short break from Katou's detective fiction. A short break that lasted about a month longer than originally intended. Having "spammed" Q.E.D. reviews earlier in the year, I wanted to return to C.M.B. before starting on Q.E.D. iff.

The first, of two, stories from C.M.B. vol. 5, "Gutenberg Bible," brings a rare visitor to Sakaki Shinra's strange, hidden Museum of Antiquity. A young, foreign woman, Mau Sugal, who carries around a huge, briefcase-like backpack and speaks Japanese perfectly.

What she brought along is a historical treasure: a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible. She wants Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, to give his expert opinion and, if possible, authenticate it. When he asks where the page came from and under which circumstances it was obtained, Sugal tells him she "cannot reveal that due to the exact wishes of the customer." Shinra flat out refuses to authenticate the page much to the annoyance of his friend, Nanase Tatsuki ("she's in trouble and needs your help"), but he can't risk the Gutenberg page being sold on the black market with his seal of authenticity stamped on it. The black market in stolen art and archaeological artifacts is at the heart of this story, because the page naturally attracts the attention from both criminals and the law. A case that also involves a rumored, hitherto unknown copy of the Gutenberg Bible locked away in a safety deposit box.

So a really fun story, but, plot-wise, impossible to spoil as the story introduces Mau Sugal with the ending revealing and setting her up as an antagonist to Shinra – more like a good natured frenemy. Mau Sugal returns in the next story.

"Spirit of the Forest," second and last story of vol. 5, sees Sugal coming back to Shinra's museum ("are you here to steal again?"). She wants him to accompany her to the jungles of Borneo to help find someone he knows, Sadaman the herbalist, who "can cure people with his knowledge of the different types of herbs growing in the forest." That talent attracted the attention of the CEO of Navaro Pharmaceuticals, Levy Noble. She saw possibilities to create new medicines to combat the bacteria that start to show immunity to current medicines, but an incident happened. Lloyd Shorts, a plant hunter, accompanied by an investigator, John Baits, were dispatched to make contact with Sadaman, but, on their second meeting, Baits was killed ("...his head was cut off") and Lloyd run into the jungle in a panic – screaming he's "gonna be killed by Sadaman as well." This murder comes with a ghostly impossibility. Right before the body was found, someone saw Baits walking across a bridge and followed him, but only bumped into Lloyd on the other side. And he hadn't seen Baits come by. So a dead man walking inexplicably vanished into thin air!

However, "Spirit of the Forest" is more like one of those character-driven puzzles from Q.E.D. in which the importance is on Shinra trying to find and understand the lessons Shadaman taught him as a kid. Not necessarily the criminal scheme playing out behind the scenes. While the ghostly disappearance on the bridge has a glimmer of originality, the solution represents one of those rare instances where the visual language of manga is not at all complimentary to trick. Normally, they show the still largely untapped potential of visual impossible crimes, but this just looked preposterous. A trick that should have been described and left to the imagination. This has not been a great year for finding gems of locked room mystery and impossible crime story.

So, on a whole, a fun enough, if unchallenging, story which also sums up this fifth volume in toto. Fun but not especially challenging, plotwise. You can write that down to being early in the series and having to introduce and setting up recurring characters and storylines. But fine for getting back into the series after a hiatus.

C.M.B. vol. 6 is made up a single, longish story, "Canopus," digging into Shinra's sometimes tragic background. The story takes place in Cairo, Egypt, where a deranged serial killer is taking a scenic tour of the historic city and generally being a bad guest in a foreign country. First stop of this serial killer is Cairo's Museum of Antiquity where a man is shot, killed and mutilated. Only other thing the killer left behind was a shell casing engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, the bullet damaged an ancient artifact that had been excavated by Shinra's late mother, Haruna. That brings a distraught Shinra to Cairo to hunt down the shooter who damaged the artifact.

Speaking of Shinra's family, "Canopus" is the other part of the crossover with Q.E.D. that began in "Pharaoh's Necklace" from vol. 28. Shinra and his cousin Sou Touma, along with Kana Mizuhara, happened to be in Cairo at the same time, which means they get to interact and exchange advise. Tatsuki uses the meeting to subtly get more background information on Shinra out of Touma and Mizuhara. Meanwhile, the serial killer continues his murder spree as more mutilated bodies and hieroglyphics shell casing turn up near Egypt's historical landmarks.

So there's plenty going on with enough room to work out the three major plot points. Firstly, the very sad, sometimes brutal backstory of Shinra's relationship with his mother and how he lost her. Secondly, while the serial killer doesn't pose a terribly complicated plot-thread, there's reason to the killer's madness to give it that good, old-fashioned whodunit tug. Thirdly, Shinra playing armchair detective to dispel the countless myths, conspiracy theories and apparent anomalies surrounding the construction of the pyramids – acknowledging his take is “just a hypothesis" with "no tangible evidence." I really enjoyed this segment short as it was! It reminded me of MORI Hiroshi's short story "Sekito no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," 1999) in which several armchair sleuths pore over an architectural conundrum from 7th century India. The crossover part simply is a bonus!

C.M.B. vol. 6 is a solid, single story volume doing an admirable job in balancing character-and series building with the various plot-threads, past and present. So probably going to read up to vol. 10, before starting on Q.E.D. iff and alternate between the two series. Stay tuned!

Background Details: Case Closed, vol. 93 by Gosho Aoyama

The 93rd volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed traditionally begins with the conclusion to the story that started in the previous volume, which finds Conan and Harley Hartwell at Coffee Poirot during a brief blackout – used as a cover for an attempted murder. When the lights turn back on, they find one of the customers crumpled up on the floor with a serious knife wound. A messy job spattering both Conan and Harley with blood. So the culprit must also be covered in blood, but none of the four suspects have so much as drop of blood on their hands or clothes. And how could the murderer have navigated a pitch-dark cafe to find the victim?

Plot-wise, the story is typical for this period, in the series, written around a trick-of-the-week which tend to have mixed results. This trick is hampered by its Frankenstein construction. I liked that the problem the stabbing presents is halfway between an impossible crime and an unbreakable alibi, but only the method the murderer employed to locate the victim is really good. I found it pleasantly surprising and had no idea that's actually possible. If you're interested, this YouTube video demonstrates it (spoilers, of course). However, it feels wasted on this story and the trick used to avoid blood splatter is clever in theory, but, considering the amount of evidence the would-be killer left behind, it comes across as delaying tactic rather than a serious attempt to get away with it. Inspector Meguire and his forensic team eventually would have stumbled to it without Conan, Harley or that barista detective.

It honestly would have made for a better, more satisfying, detective story had the murderer just used the location-trick/alibi to slip or inject the victim some poison. That being said, the story is not only about a strange stabbing at a cafe, but sets the tone for the overall volume as the individual cases basically function as stages for the bigger storylines, character-arcs and introducing new faces. This first story introduces two characters tied to a new storyline involving Harley. And it helped this otherwise average, uneven story.

Only exception is the next and best story from this volume. I mentioned in previous reviews I dislike kidnap plots, because they make for lousy detective fiction or paint-by-number thrillers, but Case Closed has delivered a couple of surprisingly good, original even, mystery-thrillers with a kidnap plot – e.g. vol. 72. The kidnap victim this time is Richard Moore's ex-wife and Rachel's mother, Eva Kaden, who's a successful attorney at law with enemies. Some of her enemies banded together, kidnapped her and brought her to an abandoned building to do some uncharacteristic heinous things (for this series) to her. Fortunately, Eva manages to escape and hide somewhere in the building to contact Rachel through a messenger app on her phone, but one of kidnappers joins the group chat under Eva's name ("mom is multiplying"). So now Conan, Rachel and Richard Moore not only have to find out where Eva is held captive, but how to separate Eva's real messages from the false ones. What ensues is a three-way cat-and-mouse game between Eva, her kidnappers and Conan & Co.

Admittedly, the setup is a little bit contrived, tech-wise, as the kidnappers had to strip down their phones (removing sim card, disabling GPS, etc.) to the point where they can make calls or use an app over the internet ("a police station antenna can't pick up WI-FI signals"). But it made for an incredibly fun story. I really liked how the messenger app was used to drive and direct the story, which in turn also provided a neat twist on the related code cracking and dying message stories from this series. Loved it!

Interestingly, Conan had to take charge and direct a panicked Richard and Rachel, which forced him to act more like Jimmy Kudo than Conan Edogawa. Rachel notices Conan's deduction skills aren't "those of an ordinary first grader" and finally demands answers from Conan. The ease with which Conan sidetracks Rachel is just ridiculous so close to vol. 100. We have reached the point where Rachel can catch Conan doing the "Sleeping Moore" routine and all he would need to do distract her is flash a laser pointer or jingle keys with his free hand.

The third story takes place during one of the regular, not always bloodless, camping trips of the Junior Detective League, but Doc Agasa is sick in bed and Rumi Wakasa takes his place – who has been behaving suspiciously since her introduction in vol. 91. She has caught the eye of Superintendent Hyoe Kuroda, of the Nagano Police, who also caught on the fact Conan is pretty much "Sleeping Moore's brains." So he right there at the camping ground alongside the Junior Detective League and a small group of college basketball players. Needless to say, the last group end up providing the story with a body and murderer. One of them burns to death while alone in his tent that had been tightly "zipped and locked shut" from the inside. More importantly, the victim was seen by everyone doing squats in his tent before the tent caught fire. It appears to be an tragic accident, but Conan believes it was murder. And proves it!

Just like the first story, the answer involves a two-part trick. I liked the simple, uncomplicated solution to the locked tent and the elaborate, maybe overly elaborate, fire-trick is undoubtedly very clever, but feels entirely out of place in this story with its outdoors setting. So not bad, on a whole, but it feels very uneven. I think the presence of Hyoe Kuroda and Rumi Wakasa added more mystery to the story than the quasi-impossible murder in a locked tent. Both fit the description of a high-ranking member of the Black Organization.

This volume ends with the setup of a story that will be concluded in the next volume, but setup is a good one with a crossover bonus. Harley is participating in a high school kendo tournament with a good chance of taking home the gold, when the tournament unsurprisingly becomes the scene of a gruesome murder. Someone dressed as a kendo fighter with mask, face covering and knife slashes one of the referees to the death in front of a blind witness – who heard the murderer go into the public restroom. And he heard nobody coming out since then. So the three people inside the restroom form a nice, tight closed-circle of suspects, but they're all free of blood? The solution to that problem will be presented in the next volume, but note that the story has two cameo crossovers by characters from Yaiba ("a hit comedy-adventure series which Aoyama created before Detective Conan").

So not a terribly bad or below average volume, especially not the excellent kidnapping of Eva Kaden, but overall, the stories are very uneven and an undeniable step down from the previous volume. What happened in the background of the stories really is what helped to keep this volume above average by preventing from it becoming terribly uneventful or worse.

Crossover at the Borders: C.M.B. vol. 19 & Q.E.D. vol. 41 by Motohiro Katou

This took longer than planned, but after a year, or two, I finally arrived at the big crossover event between Motohiro Katou's two flagship series, Q.E.D. and C.M.B., which is an international affair bringing casting both series detectives in the roles of special envoys – dispatching them to my country! Now I know why some of you were so eager for me to get to this crossover event.

A crossover event officially beginning in Q.E.D. vol. 41, "Special Envoy of Balkia," but you don't necessarily have to read them order. More on that in a moment.

"Special Envoy of Balkia" centers around ex-president Suami Gareth, of the fictitious Republic of Balkia in eastern Europe, who's primary interest was "hoarding illegal wealth" in smuggled diamonds, money laundering and other criminal activities – which resulted in economic sanctions. So the Republic of Balkia rapidly descended into social unrest and ultimately a short, but bloody, civil war ("he shot his own citizens") killing over thirty thousand people. President Suami Gareth left behind "destroyed buildings and overflowing graves" as he escaped the country. Fortunately, the Belgian police arrested him.

So the new president of the Balkia Republic, Mantley Coudan, requested the ex-president to be extradited to stand trial in Balkia. However, the Belgian authorities refuse to hand him over and intend to hold the trial themselves, because of the danger his return to the country poses. The ex-president still has a lot armed loyalists with a diamond crammed war chest, which could reignite the conflict. And they don't believe Balkia is capable of holding a trial in its current state. Balkia disagrees, "it infringes on our sovereignty," who take the dispute to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands! Sou Touma is asked to represent and argue in the court on behalf of Balkia, while the group representing the Belgium is headed by Touma's cousin, Sakaki Shinra, from C.M.B. Yes, it's kind of awesome to see both of them wandering around my country. Netherlands mentioned!

Now this is where the story becomes a little tricky to discuss, because this crossover is a tale of two identical (copy and paste) stories with diverging endings. The first-half of the C.M.B. part of this crossover, "The Arrested President Affair," is practically identical as it copy/pastes the backstory from "Special Envoy of Balkia" and Touma's explanation of International Court of Justice – except it's from Shinra's perspective. A notable difference between the two is "The Arrested President Affair" giving a better picture of the crimes Suami Gareth committed during his presidency. Rampant corruption and triggering a civil war is bad enough, but his way of dealing with dissenters was forcing "parents and their children to kill each other." Most of the parents/dissenters killed themselves instead, which he referred to as "that boring incident." A crime deserving the kind of justice that can only be dispensed by a hangman, firing squad or a trip on the Orient Express.

So the two cousins and protagonists, Touma and Shinra, find themselves on opposite sides of the international court. Touma argues for Balkia's sovereign rights to be upheld, while Shinra argues to moral side the president must answer for his crimes and Balkia is not a position to make those guarantees ("Balkia cannot be trusted"). Where the stories differ is not in the conclusion of the hearing, but its aftermath which both take a thriller-ish approach. "Special Envoy of Balkia" ends with an out-and-out, anime-style fight scene with a loyalist faction that spills out to the rooftop of a church. It's sounds as ridiculous as it's fun! "The Arrested President Affair" aims with its ending for an international action thriller tying up several loose ends concerning the missing envoy, missing diamonds and bringing justice to war torn country. And no less fun than the epic battle of the other story.

"Special Envoy of Balkia" and "The Arrested President Affair" is certainly a fun, cross promotional crossover and, typical for these two series, not easily pigeonholed. I don't think you can call it a courtroom drama nor an action thriller in the traditional sense, but it sure was an entertaining way to pit Touma and Shinra against one another. That's also it's major drawback. The overall story would have been less repetitive, more effective and tighter had been told in go, i.e. contained to a single volume. But it something that had to be sacrificed for the cross promotion. What could have been fixed is order of the stories. "The Arrested President Affair" should have come before "Special Envoy of Balkia."

An anonymous comment left on my review of Q.E.D. vol. 37-38 pointed out reading the C.M.B. point of view of the case first is better, because you don't know what Touma thinks or why he's making certain moves – which makes for better storytelling. I agree. So far from a perfect or simply a very good story, even judged as one of Katou Motohiro's unorthodox mysteries, but still found it to be an entertaining one. Crossovers are my guilty pleasure and having one of favorite detective character visit my country is almost personalized fan service. That's probably the best way to sum up this crossover: a fan pleaser.

Hold on a minute, there's more. C.M.B. vol. 19 and Q.E.D. vol. 41 have additional, if minor, stories. C.M.B. opens with two shorter stories, "The Master of Ginza Mugen-Tei" and "Dance the Night Away," which try to emulate the character-driven puzzles of Q.E.D. However, I found neither particular interesting nor memorable. Only notable thing about "The Master of Ginza Mugen-Tei" is how inappropriate it's to ask someone of Shinra's age to probe a such a question. Although some would counter it's equally inappropriate to have a teenagers pawing around the scene of a murder or have them argue cases in the International Court of Justice.

The second story from Q.E.D. vol. 41, "Caff's Memories," is a substantial better, character-driven puzzle, but not the best the series has produced. Story begins with Touma visiting a federal prisoner, Caff Darby, in the United States on behalf of his wife. Lin Darby once was a successful fortune who brought her husband fame and fortune, "investor with God's Eye," who studied and wholly believed in her predictive powers ("Lin's predictions have come true 95% of the time"). But his financial windfalls brought him scrutiny from the authorities. And ended up in prison when Lin was wounded during a shooting. So what's Touma supposed to do? The story has an M. Night Shyamalan twist you can see coming the moment Touma slapped down the photograph of the old man on the table, but liked Touma's explanation why he thought Lin could predict the future.

So, yeah, I'm glad to finally have crossed this crossover off the list and continue with the Q.E.D. series, which has nine more volumes. I'll be interspersing them with reviews of C.M.B., until Shinra takes over from Touma on this blog. Rest assured, the reviews of C.M.B. will be interspersed with reviews of Q.E.D. iff. Stay tuned!

Cops & Robbers: "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper" (1987), "The Murder in Room 1010" (1987) and "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" (1991) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch, the man of a thousand stories, was not only a prolific writer of short stories, who appeared in every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1973 until his death in 2008, but a varied one as well – whose works covers detective stories of all stripes and varietals. Mike Grost correctly noted that "many of Hoch's series detectives tend to personify mystery subgenres" and "can shift to any of these genres simply by altering his series protagonist." For example, Dr. Sam Hawthorne exclusively deals with impossible crimes, Jeffery Rand is a code cracking spy, Captain Leopold series are modern police procedurals and Ben Snow is a gun-slinging sleuth from the Wild West. So the series all take a different approach to telling a detective story, whether it be the characters or setting, but the plots unmistakably identifies them as works from Hoch's hands.

Some cynics will simply call it a formula, but it gives a harmonizing quality to Hoch's many, vastly different series. More importantly, it allowed Hoch to bring different series-characters together for a crossover story! Hoch wrote three such crossovers during the early '90s.

The first of these crossover stories, "The Problem of the Haunted Tepee" (1990), has an aged Ben Snow visiting Dr. Sam Hawthorne in the 1930s to consult him on a case from the 1800s he was never able to solve. "The Spy and the Gypsy" (1991) is a crossover between Rand and the gypsy detective, Michael Vlado, which I'll get to eventually. Sandwiched in between is a short story bringing Nick Velvet and Sandra Paris to Captain Jules Leopold's city. That short story gave me the idea for this three-for-one review discussing two short stories, one from the Nick Velvet series and the other a Captain Leopold story, which I picked based on Grost's praise – calling them "some of Hoch's purest and most delightful impossible crime tales." And concluding with the crossover between the two series.

"The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper," originally published as "The Theft of the Lost Slipper" in the April, 1987, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is the 54th short story to feature Nick Velvet. A thief-for-hire who only steals valueless things for a hefty fee (see The Thefts of Nick Velvet, 1978). This time, Velvet is approached by Gloria's brother, Arnie, who runs a Greenwich Village restaurant and normally wants nothing to do with Velvet or criminals in general. Velvet is surprised when Arnie asks him to steal a left shoe, "a woman's pump with a pink three-inch heel and pink straps," locked away in the safe of a fancy lawyer, Frederick Junis. The shoe in question belongs to a model the lawyer knew, Sophie Moment, but she ran away and left her shoe ("...sounds like Cinderella"). A complete pair is worth less than twenty-five dollars and so he accepts the assignment, but why is Arnie willing to pay him twenty-five thousand dollars to steal the shoe?

Velvet boldly goes to the office of Junis, located on the thirty-first floor of the Regal
Building on Wall Street, where he presents himself as a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Sophie Moment. What he eventually learns is surprising to say the least. Sophie Moment has disappeared under seemingly impossible circumstances just outside the office. Junis had caught Moment going through his files and fled through a private door, opening onto a short corridor with just two other doors, where she simply vanished into thin air – because the people behind those two doors swear nobody came out. During her disappearance-act from the corridor, Moment lost a shoe which Junis keeps in his office safe as evidence. So, once again, the thief has to turn detective to figure out what happened. Not only to the disappearance from the lawyer's office, but who killed the body Velvet stumbles across after wiggling out of a tight corner.

The strength of "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper" is not in a single trick or a clever, somewhat original idea. The solution to the impossible disappearance is a redressing of an old trick and something the story itself acknowledges (ROT13: “Yvxr Purfgregba'f cbfgzna fur'q orpbzr vaivfvoyr”). Instead the strength is in the neat dovetailing of the plot, folding everything beautifully together, complemented by the setting with its "postcard view of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor" and "the twin-towered World Trade Center." So another good, solid short story from Hoch, but not nearly as good as the next story.

"The Murder in Room 1010" first appeared in the November, 1987, issue of EQMM and recently reprinted in the Crippen & Landru collection The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) – introduced by Roland Lacourbe. Arguably, this is one of Hoch's better and more interesting locked room mysteries.

Captain Leopold and Lieutenant Fletcher are called to the staid old St. George Hotel, in the center of the city facing Veterans Park, where a dead man has been found in one of the rooms. The front desk received a report of a woman screaming in Room 1010, but a security guard who tried to go in with a pass key found it was also chain-locked. After cutting the chain, they find the body of a man with multiple stab wounds and "the screaming woman, barely conscious, next to the body of a murdered man" ("...maybe a little high on something"). The victim is a disgraced school teacher, Ken Armstrong, who turned to crime and the woman is identified as Anita Buckman. She claims to be innocent of the murder. Leopold finds an important clue, "a small, voice-activated tape recorder," in her handbag. An ex-colleague and private investigator, Max Hafner, had asked him about exactly such a recording device only days before. Hafner tells Leopold that Armstrong had been blackmailing Rudolph Buckman, "he'd had a fling with a prostitute and somebody took pictures," before trying to get more money from his wife Anita. Hafner advised her to record the transaction and use the recording as leverage to make him back off or the recording is handed over to the police. When she went to his hotel room to hand over the money, Anita blackouts and, somehow, a murderer entered and left the locked room. But how?

Just like "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper," the strength of "The Murder in Room 1010" is in the masterly dovetailing of the various plot-strands to create a first-rate, classically-styled locked room mystery – presented as a police procedural. The locked room-trick itself is not terribly complicated, on the contrary, it's a great example of simplistic brilliance. More importantly, the way Hoch used the circumstances to create the locked room situation. If you're interested in Hoch or impossible crime fiction, I recommend reading Grost's short review (beware of spoilers) going over why Hoch's approach to the impossible crime in "The Murder in Room 1010" is "unusual in mystery fiction" and "harder to do" than your average locked room puzzle. And why it's a somewhat atypical story for Hoch. Something he didn't mention, demonstrating Hoch's experienced hand as a plotter, is how he quietly eliminated the possibility of shenanigans with the crack allowed by the chain-lock by dispatching Armstrong multiple stab wounds. That would have been a different story had he been found with a knife-handle sticking out of his back. So a small gem of an impossible crime story and even better Hoch short story. A shoe-in for the next update of my list of favorite impossible crime stories.

"The Theft of Leopold's Badge" was first published in the March, 1991, issue of EQMM and almost reads like a three-act play. Hoch created Sandra Paris, the White Queen, to be rival to Velvet and introduced her in the short story "The Theft of the White Queen's Menu" (1983). Paris modeled her crimes and persona on the White Queen from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871). So she only steals valuables before breakfast in seemingly impossible circumstances.

The opening of the story finds Sandra Paris backstage at "Breakfast with the Muses," a fancy fundraising event for the Parker Museum, where she has taken the place of one of the nine muses – whom she tied, gagged and stuffed into a closet. When the performance begins, Paris takes out a roadside flare, tossed it at a priceless Van Gogh painting and "watched it erupt in a flash of vivid flame." Naturally, the Van Gogh painting is not destroyed, but cleverly lifted by Paris. She nearly got away with it. Paris made a tiny, easily missed mistake, but she's in Captain Leopold's city. Leopold and Fletcher caught up with Paris and the stolen Van Gogh at the airport. Even worse, while Paris was stealing the Van Gogh, someone stole two more paintings and left a getaway car with a body in the parking lot. Paris asks for her one phone call and asks Nick Velvet to return an old favor ("...I got you out of jail once").

So the second-act, of sorts, is Velvet meeting Leopold and trying to get Paris released, which has that "worlds collide" feeling a crossover should have. Leopold immediately checked Velvet's background, "do people really hire you to steal items of little or no value?" ("there have been stories to that effect"), showing these characters come from very different series. Velvet is a charming criminal with a moral compass who's easily cheered on in his own series, but, in the eyes of Leopold, he's simply another criminal. So it's rather an odd choice Velvet gets to dictate the story from here on out. Leopold is not convinced Paris worked or could have done the job on her own and the murder is simply the result of thieves falling out. Velvet wants to prove Paris worked alone and had her hands full with stealing the Van Gogh by replicating its disappearance using Leopold's badge. Not to mention revealing who stole the other paintings and shot the man in the parking lot.

This messy description of the plot barely does justice how nicely Hoch layered it. From Paris' caper and the second theft/murder ("...someone took advantage of your presence to do a little work of their own") to the trick to make the painting/police badge vanish in front of several witnesses, which should please anyone who loves a bit of stage magic mixed with their mysteries. Not to forget characters from two entirely different series crossing paths and making it work. Hoch's approach to crossovers is an interesting one as one series-character always seems to have the upper hand over the other. In "The Problem of the Haunted Tepee," Snow needs Dr. Hawthorne to solve an impossible crime from the past. "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" begins with Leopold checkmating the White Queen, but then Velvet takes the lead and solves the case in the third and final act. I assume the same holds true for "The Spy and the Gypsy." So would liked to have seem more opposition from Leopold, but other than that, it's a rare and excellent crossover mystery. I loved Velvet's last line to Paris ("I think we'd both better stay out of his city in the future").

All in all, three really good short stories from Hoch! "The Murder in Room 1010" is obviously the best of the lot and "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" is a genuinely rare treat, if you love (good) crossovers. Only "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper"
appears a bit average next to those two, but not one that'll disappoint fans of the series. So not bad and wish Hoch had continued pooling his series-characters. Just imagine the implications of Simon Ark casually turning up in a Dr. Hawthorne or Alexander Swift story!

Broken Pieces: Q.E.D. vol. 27-28 by Motohiro Katou

This series needs no introduction and there have been enough excessively padded blog-posts lately. So let's jump right in.

Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 27 begins with an inconspicuous gem, "Mirror Image," in which
Kana Mizuhara roped Sou Touma into cycling her around town and bring lunch to her father, Inspector Mizuhara – who's investigating a suspicious house fire. A fire had burned through the second floor of a house that had stood abandoned since the previous owner died. This brings what should have been a recurring character into the story, Sakuma Toyokichi, who's a crime scene investigator and "an expert in fire scenes." Toyokichi is going to retire the next day and so the fire in the abandoned house is the last time he'll be sifting through the ashes of a potential crime scene, which he does with decades of experience behind him. Toyokichi brought along a group of rookie investigators to instruct ("don't go into the scene with preconceptions"), demonstrates his ability to identify burned or molten pieces of debris ("he's like a dictionary") and pinpointing the origin of the fire with a bucket of water. I really liked how this old crime scene investigator contrasts and complimented the young amateur detective. Touma is a teenage math prodigy who not always willingly has to play the amateur (armchair) detective and reasons the truth from often abstract clues, while old Toyokichi is an experienced hand whose job simply "is to collect evidence." They worked very well together which brings us to the puzzle component of the story.

There are four suspects to consider, as they were the only people with keys to the house, which include the twin daughters of the late home owner, Reiko and Hanako, who were separated when their parents divorced. Reiko went with her father and Hanako with her mother. So they lived entirely different lives and furthered the effect of being mirror images of each other. They both have a mole on their chin, but Reiko's mole is on her right side and Hanako has one on her left "as they were mirror images of each other," but Hanako, unlike her sister, suffered many financial hardships while living with her mother. So they never really got along and naturally accuse each other. But how does it all relate to the fire? Touma reasons that "behind this case there is a problem not behind the difference of left and right, but it is hidden within the problem of front and back." What follows is a chain of deductions that first exonerates all four suspects, before demonstrating what logically must have happened. Brilliantly reasoned!

So the story is a character-driven character piece, which has to be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, but an extremely clever and well done character piece. More importantly, "Mirror Image" is a great example that good detective fiction does not always have to depend tropes and tricks like cast-iron alibis, dying messages, impossible crimes or even something as simple as a body. You can do away with all of these and still produce excellent detective fiction, but, as Q.E.D. has demonstrated countless of times, it requires an appreciation and understanding what makes a detective story trick – something of a series specialty. And the next story is another experimental one.

The second story, "Burden of Proof," mixes high school theatrics and social studies with courtroom dramatics. A mock trial is staged at the school of Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to familiarize students with the new court and jury system. A lottery is going to randomly pick six names of students who have to sit on the jury and both were drawn for jury duty. The case of the mock trial is a simple one: Toyokawa Tsuneo stands accused of assaulting a woman, Azuma Sachiko, and robbed her of 150,000 yen. The prosecutor presents the jury with a string of circumstantial evidence with the defense showing why there's a difference between direct and circumstantial evidence, which the jurors have to weigh and decide if there's enough to prove the accused is guily beyond reasonable doubt. Touma points out towards the end, "the burden of proof falls entirely on the prosecution" and "the jurists may only make their decision based on the presented evidence." This gives the story a loophole to cheat without actually cheating as the trial is an entirely different matter, legally, than the solution Touma provides at the end ("the prosecution overlooked one possibility").

So, conceptually, "Burden of Proof" is an interesting story, but not nearly as good, or memorable, as the first story. Another excellent and solid volume with two great stories that continued to look for new ways to tell a detective story.

Q.E.D. vol. 28 starts with an archaeological mystery, "Pharaoh's Necklace," which incidentally became my backdoor introduction to Q.E.D.'s companion series C.M.B. Someone warned awhile ago that a crossover story is imminent, but it had simply slipped my mind and now all those plans so carefully laid out in the review of volumes 25 and 26 have come under threat. I really, really want to read C.M.B. now, but first things first. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara travel to Cairo, Egypt, where an acquaintance from his university days in America discovered a new tomb in the northern part of the Valley of the Kings. Thomas Potter, an archaeologist, tumbled into a tomb containing two mummies and the female mummy has royal necklace around her neck. So it has to be a royal mummy, but, before the untouched tomb can be thoroughly investigated, Potter is struck down by falling rocks – landing him in the hospital. Now he has the sponsor of the excavation on his back and called on Touma to take his place as a favor ("but... this is out of my field"). Touma accepting the assignment confronts him with two mysteries from the past and present.

Why was there a royal necklace in a tomb that appears to have been a commoner's tomb? Why does everyone involved in the excavation keep having unfortunate accidents? Since archaeology is outside of his expertise, Touma calls upon his cousin from his mother's side, Sakaki Shinra, who's the protagonist of C.M.B. and happened to be in Egypt to handle a murder case at the Museum of Antiquities. A story from C.M.B. vol. 6 in which Mizuhara lends him a helping hand in solving that murder. But here, Shinra helps Touma by inspecting the necklace and concludes it's genuine enough. Just completely out-of-time for the date of the tomb in which it was found. The solution to this historical conundrum, simplicity itself, proved to be much better than the contemporary problem of the dig-side accidents. Touma's hypothesis about the two mummies, differing states of preservation, presence of a royal necklace and the sealed entrance is well reasoned and provided a satisfying, if bitter sweet, answer to those ancient questions. That alone is sufficient to make "Pharaoh's Necklace" a personal favorite, but loving crossovers and archaeological mysteries almost as much as impossible crimes and unbreakable alibis also helped a lot. So, on a whole, a pretty good and fun little story!

 

Regrettably, I can't say the same of the second and last story, "Human Firework," which reads like a modern retelling of Edogawa Rampo as a psychological crime story. The story concerns drawing in a sketchbook depicting the body of a woman in various stages of decomposition. Touma compares the sketches to a certain type of Buddhist painting, kusoshi emaki, which "consists of nine parts starting from when someone died until the body decomposes" to make death easier for people to understand, but the sketches look new – like they were drawn "while observing a real body." But do these disturbing possess the power to change someone's behavior? The crux of the story is people who got swallowed by their own darkness. Q.E.D. has a great track record when it comes to making these off-beat, often experimental stories work, but "Human Firework" is not one of them. And perhaps it was the wrong story to follow "Pharaoh's Necklace." But who am I to complain? One out of four stories, spread across two volumes, left me underwhelmed, which is not a bad score at all. So, all things considered, another splendid demonstration why Q.E.D. is the 21st century detective story.

A note for the curious: "Burden of Proof" officially broke the series timeline and continuity. Q.E.D. started out in the late nineties with vol. 2, 3, 4 and 5 covering the period from 1998 to 1999 with vol. 6 taking place days before New Year. After that, the timeline and continuity got a bit blurry, but those earliest stories clearly took place during the late '90s and early '00s. "Burden of Proof" is set in 2007! So, if you follow the original timeline, Touma and Mizuhara should be in their mid-twenties. You tried, Katou. You tried.

Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce

Last month, I half-excitedly alluded in a short story compilation post, "Locked and Loaded, Part 3: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mysteries Stories," to a number of planned review of some obscure, out-of-print detective novels – carefully picked from Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). Scavenger along the muddy banks of obscurity never guarantees you'll find something good or even moderately interesting, but my recent scavenger hunt resulted in the slimmest pickings to date.

Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger (1927) represents a breathtaking low in the genre's history and a textbook example why S.S. van Dine and Ronald A. Knox decided to put down some rules. E.G. Cousin's Death by Marriage (1959) attempted to bridge the gap between the traditional and modern schools with an inverted how-did-he-do-it plot, but a lack of clueing regarding the locked room-trick entirely undermined what Cousin tried to do. Anthony Lejeune's Mr. Diabolo (1960) gave it the good old college try, but over promised and massively under delivered. Surprisingly, the best one of the lot came from a mid-tier writer, Hampton Stone, whose The Girl with the Hole in Her Head (1949) ended up being a better whodunit than a locked room mystery. Yes, there was also August Blanche's prescient "Lars Blom" ("Lars Blom and His Disappearing Gun," 1857/63) and Masahiro Imamura's genre-bending Magan no hako no satsujin (Death Within the Evil Eye, 2019), but neither are listed in Locked Room Murders. So they don't count. But what to do when you run into a parade of mediocre or downright bad locked room mysteries? You simply return to an old favorite and hope it stands up to a second, usually more critical, examination.

I fortunately had a bit of luck last year when returning to some old favorites from the likes of John Sladek and Hake Talbot. So, following the aforementioned letdowns, decided to finally take a second look at one of my all-time favorite (locked room) mystery novels from the 1930s. But did a second postmortem yield different results? Let's find out! 

Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) introduced the world to the best comedic detective of the period, Sergeant Beef, whose bull-in-a-china-shop methods and "a look of rather beery benevolence" belies a startlingly rational mind with a capacity for common sense – played to great effect in his first of eight novel-length appearances. Something of an accomplishment considering Sgt. Beef is more or less a background character as he cedes most of the pages to the titular detectives and his perpetually embarrassed (future) chronicler, Lionel Townsend.

Lionel Townsend becomes involved in a murder case as a guest of Dr. Alexander and Mary Thurston during one of their weekend parties at their Georgian manor house. The other guests include Alec Norris ("an unsuccessful writer of novels very different from murder mysteries"), David Strickland ("some sort of protege of the Thurstons"), Sam Williams ("the family lawyer") and the Vicar, Mr. Rider, who "really does the most unbalanced things when purity's called into question." At the Thurstons' weekend parties, everyone talked a great deal and every topic under the sun is discussed. So, naturally, the dinner conversation turns to the topic of crime and detective with Norris doing most of the talking ("...he pretended to be contemptuous of the topic"). Norris posited that "literary crime is all baffling mystery and startling clues" whereas "in real life, murder, for instance, nearly always turns out to be some sordid business of a strangled servant girl." So "no premeditated murder could puzzle the police for very long," because "where there's a motive and the victim's identified, there's an arrest." That opinion is going to be tested that very night when a cry of terror is heard coming from Mary Thurston's bedroom.

They find the closed door to her bedroom double bolted, top and bottom, from the inside and, when smashing through the upper panel, they observe Mary Thurston's face ("more crimson than white") on a pillow – a clear cut across her throat. But when the door is broken down, nobody except the Mary Thurston's body is found in the bedroom. There's an unlocked window that can be opened, however, it overlooks a twenty-foot drop and an undisturbed flowerbed below. And ten feet to the window above. So how the murderer entered and left the room is a complete mystery. A locked room mystery! Just like that, the members of the house party find themselves in the middle of one of those blasted drawing room mysteries they had been discussing over dinner. But things get even better the next day. 

Early in the morning, those "indefatigably brilliant private investigators who seem to be always handy when a murder has been committed began to arrive." The first to arrive in his Rolls Royce is Lord Simon Plimsoll and his manservant, Butterfield, who brought along a small laboratory worth of photographic equipment. The second detective to arrive on the scene is M. Amer Picon, "a very curious little man," whose frail physique is topped a large egg-shaped head and speaks to Townsend with "more command of French" than he "had previously credited him with." The third and final detective is little round-faced priest, Monsignor Smith, who "a knack of saying the most disturbing things" or "whispering mystically." I think most seasoned mystery readers immediately recognize Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown in Lord Simon, Amer Picon and Monsignor Smith. Bruce created a trio of genuinely striking and splendid caricatures of the three most recognizable fictional detective of the era who contrast wonderfully with the "deplorable crudeness" of Sgt. Beef ("'Ere... 'ave you been blackmailing Mrs. Thurston?").

So the sergeant's future chronicler prefers to tag along with the three celebrated amateur reasoners of some repute as they unearth a treasure trove of clues, motives, faked alibis and hidden connections. They all apply their own characteristics, easily recognizable methods to uncovering those clues and questioning everyone involved. All the while, Sgt. Beef is in the background saying, "I know 'oo done it." Sgt. Beef tells Townsend he has already reported his findings to his superiors, but he was told to wait till they've had their say. I've never been able to forget his next few lines, "Well, I'm waiting. Only I wish they'd 'urry up about it. With their stepsons, and their bells, and their where-did-the-screams-come-from. Why, they try to make it complicated." I've heard echoes of those lines in my head every time a detective is playing up their part.

Now if this had been nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek treatment of the 1930s detective story and some of it's celebrated characters, Case for Three Detectives would have been the model for how to parody the detective story. Case for Three Detectives is not only a spot-on parody of Lord Peter, Hercule Poirot and Father Brown, but an accurate and very shrewd pastiche of Sayers, Christie and Chesterton.

Lord Simon, Amer Picon and Monsignor Smith all arrive at different conclusions and present their solutions, which are quite good and ingenious on the surface, but, if you're familiar with the originals, you'll notice how perfectly their false-solutions mirror those originals – incorporating favored plotting-technique, tropes and themes. Sayers believed "it was much more interesting to try to figure out how the crime was committed than who done it," which is reflected in Lord Simon's technical and clever explanation to the locked room problem. Amer Picon constructs his solution around, what else, the eternal triangle ("...beware of that little triangle. He is dangerous"). Monsignor Smith's solution is perhaps together with Knox's "Solved by Inspection" (1931) the best Chestertonian detective story not actually written by Chesterton. Nick Fuller rightly called the three false-solutions "very perceptive" and ended up making the story so much than some lighthearted ribbing of the detective story. What impressed me as much this time around is how he it makes sense here that the false-solutions outshine the correct one at the end.

Everyone loves a good false-solution, but, more often than not, the false-solution turns out to be a better, much more satisfying explanation than the correct solution (e.g. John Rhode & Carter Dickson's Fatal Descent, 1939). I've seen people complain that Sgt. Beef's correct solution is boring and lacks the radiant brilliance of the three false-solutions, but that always struck me as missing the point. Sgt. Beef is introduced as one of those uncouth, flatfooted and hopelessly out of his depth village policeman who prefers to be spending time at the pub drinking beer and playing darts. The story and particularly the ending would not have worked had he come up with a dazzling ingenious and original solution to the murder. Sgt. Beef is supposed to come to the right, uncomplicated solution through routine policework while the three detectives are "crawling about on floors, applying lenses to the paint-work, and asking the servants the most unexpected questions." That's the joke!

So, to cut a long, rambling review short, Case for Three Detectives has only gone up in my estimation and more than stood up to a second, critical examination. Bruce artfully intertwined a ribbing parody with a perceptive pastiche that both take aim at three of his already well established contemporaries and their creations. Bruce demonstrated great insight in his debut as he used all the funny characters, comedic bits and genre tropes to craft a clever and thoroughly entertaining detective story. A highlight of the 1930s detective novel full with rivaling detectives, false-solutions, faked alibis and an impossible murder that comes highly recommended. 

A note for the curious: if you loved Bruce's Case for Three Detectives, I highly recommend you also take a look at Knox's The Three Taps (1927) and Michel Herbert & Eugène Wyl's La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932). They can be read as proto-types of Case for Three Detectives with rivaling detectives and multiple solutions. The Forbidden House even has a line echoing Sgt. Beef complaining about so-called detectives making things needlessly complicated.