The Unbreakable Discussion on Impossible Alibis

 

Every few years, the topic of alibis and impossible crimes is brought up, "But is it a Locked Room Mystery?," "Impossible Crime and Alibi's" and "On A Defense of the Impossible Alibi Problem and "Doylist" Impossibilities," which were fruitless attempts to try and nail down what constitutes an impossible alibi – everyone had their own ideas and definitions. The line separating a regular, unbreakable alibi from an impossible one remained vague and undefined. So a consensus on the subject was never reached and to outsiders it must have looked like discussions on the detective story's equivalent of Big Foot or UFOs.

The question of impossible alibis was raised again following my review Christianna Brand's Tour de Force (1955) back in November. Tour de Force is a strong fan favorite and the new British Library edition won the 2024 Reprint of the Year. I personally think Brand's London Particular (1952) is more deserving, but Tour de Force is nonetheless a plot-technical marvel in how it constructs and then rips through half a dozen alibis. So understand why the book has its fans, but Brand has written better and disagreed that the alibis amounted to an impossible problem. I tried to explain why they weren't impossible alibis, but my arguments were scoffed at and rejected in the comments. What can you do?

I promised to return to the subject in the new year and dedicate a post to it. I'm not disillusion enough to think this is going to settle the issue, but at least it will give something to refer back to when it's brought up again in the future.

I always thought I had come up with a very easy, crystal clear way to distinguish between an ordinary, manufactured alibi and an impossible alibi – a difference depending on a tiny, devilish detail. An ordinary, non-impossible alibi is created with fabricated or misleading evidence like manipulated clocks, witnesses or paperwork (e.g. train or movie tickets). So an ordinary, non-impossible alibi involves retracing the steps of the murderer/suspects and not uncommonly involves breaking down one, or more, identities which is commonly associated with the Realist School of the Golden Age detective story. Mike Grost writes on his website "faked alibis and misleading trails often turn on a breakdown of identity" with "what seems to be a trail left by two, can really be the work of one" or "one person's trail can really have been left by two people" ("there are many complex variations on this..."). Mystery writers like Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts made their name with rigging up and tearing down such sort of alibis, but no fair minded person would seriously consider them a variation on the impossible crime. But when does it become one?

An impossible alibi, in my opinion, entirely relies on the murderer appearing to have been physically incapable of having carried out the deed. Not because the murderer claimed to have been somewhere else, but because their was a hard, physical limitation on the murderer's freedom to move or act. For example, the murderer was imprisoned or undergoing surgery at the time of the murder or a physical handicap apparently keeping them from off the list of suspects. Like a wheelchair bound murderer with the victim lying on the first-floor landing or one-armed killer who found a way to break someone's neck. So the apparent physical restraints alibi the murderer. Not clocks, witnesses or train tickets. The TV series Monk had a couple of the best, modern-day examples of the impossible alibi (e.g. Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect, 2003). This distinction is not merely a personal, arbitrary one, but has some reasoning behind it.

The locked room mystery/impossible crime and the unbreakable/impossible alibi are both subcategories of the good, old-fashioned howdunit in which the focus is not on who committed the crime or why, but how it was done – which today are more commonly referred to as "perfect crime" stories. At it's most basic, the howdunit concerns a puzzling murder method or very thorough disappearances. Two classic examples include Dorothy L. Sayers' Unnatural Death (1927) and Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933) in addition to the works of R. Austin Freeman and John Rhode. The unbreakable alibi and impossible crime distinguished themselves from the regular howdunit by giving the murderer a seemingly incontestable alibi or make their crimes appear like a complete impossibility. A body inside a tightly locked or guarded room. A lonely trail of footprints ending in the middle of a field of unbroken snow. A ten-ton statue impossibly vanishing within the blink of an eye. You know the variations and they're immediately recognizable to everyone who can tell the difference between a closed circle and locked room.

So assumed applying the same principle of having to present an apparently physical impossibility, in order to weed out the garden variety alibis, made for an easy, tidy and logical answer to the question. But my reasonable take was rejected and dismissed several times. Since then, I've seen books like Bush's Cut Throat (1932) and The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) labeled as impossible alibi/crime novels. I famously overpraised the former and think the latter is a fine, Golden Age detective novel, but both fall squarely in the first category with their (SPOILER/ROT13) znavchyngvba bs pybpxf. Brilliantly done in both cases, of course, but they're not impossible alibis/crimes.

I'm not a fan of this developing trend of lumping every alibi story, no matter how good or bad they may be, in with the impossible crime story. It simply dilutes, what's otherwise, a distinctive and somewhat unique subgenre/off-shoot by adding an untold amount of novels and short stories to the list. Every detective novel or short story that played around with simple or complicated alibi-trick suddenly becomes an impossible crime story. When nearly everything is an impossible crime, nothing really is an impossible crime. Just a whodunit with extra hurdles.

Why so many insist on counting alibis as impossible crimes without discrimination is a bit baffling to me. I suppose one of the reasons is that there aren't many actual clear cut examples of the physically impossible alibi outside of Monk. There's one rather famous and celebrated classic, but acknowleding it as an impossible alibi counts as a spoiler (ROT13: ntngun puevfgvr'f qrngu ba gur avyr unf n qbhoyr vzcbffvoyr nyvov nf bar bs gur zheqrere'f nccrnef gb or vapncnpvgngrq ol n thafubg jbhaq, juvyr gur bgure vf frqngrq naq thneqrq ol n ahefr). Another problem is that from the few genuine examples some are borderline cases (e.g. Arthur Porges' "Coffee Break," 1964) and, according my definition, the impossible alibi is inextricably-linked to the Birlstone Gambit – casting a character thought to be dead as the killer. One of the detective's story oldest tropes, but not a universally beloved one with more than it's fair share of critics.

So lacking some good, clear cut and non-spoilerish examples, the alibi-tricks from Bush's Cut Throat and The Case of the Missing Minutes might look like impossible alibis because they apply considerable ingenuity to the problem. The kind of tricks you would expect from a first-class locked room mystery, which is why I lavished so much praise on the former. But they still rely on (ROT13) znavchyngvba bs pybpxf. I simply can't call them impossible crime novels.

Japanese mystery writer Tetsuya Ayukawa described the difference between impossible crime and unbreakable alibi as the former being an alibi in space and the latter as a locked room in time. I believe the important difference between an unbreakable and impossible alibis is the difference between external and internal. The unbreakable alibi depends on outside evidence like witnesses or tempered clocks (external), while the impossible alibi solely depends on the murder's physical state or whereabout (internal). But, once again, very few agree on what, exactly constitutes an impossible alibi.

The fact that this question was raised nearly a decade ago and we're still arguing when a cast-iron alibi becomes an impossible crime is perhaps the best argument against categorizing them as impossible crime. So propose to keep treating them as two separate, distinctly different, subcategories/off-shoots of the howdunit and put this muddied discussion to bed. Well, the comments are open. So you know where to air your grievances.

Detective Conan: Who's the Boss?

Some weeks ago, I discussed Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Red Locked Room (2020) and ended the review with the promise to post my fan theory regarding the secret identity of the leader of the Black Organization, which is the red-thread running through the main storyline of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed – published outside of the English-speaking world as Detective Conan. Mild spoilers ahead!

I'm currently at vol. 73 and wanted to bridge the gap with vol. 74 by rereading and reviewing the landmark story, The Sunset Manor Case, from vol. 30. A story that takes place in palatial, Western-style manor house where six detectives have gathered to solve a decades old mystery and getting murdered. I'm not far enough in the series to officially know that the elusive boss made an appearance, of sorts, in that story, but bits and pieces have been spoiled to me over the years. And when going through the story, it suddenly occurred to me who the boss could be. A character who shrewdly cloaked himself in someone else's feathers, but not in the way long-time readers of the series might assume.

First, I've to get those annoying, but necessary, spoilers out of the way. Continue to read at your own risk. The reader has been warned!

On December 13, 2017, Gosho Aoyama revealed that the boss is, or was, the multi-millionaire who owned Sunset Manor, Renya Karasuma, who "died half a century ago under mysterious circumstances" and, if he's still alive, he would be over a 140-years-old – suggesting he was the first one to rejuvenate. And assumed a new identity. Just like Jimmy/Conan in vol. 1. Very likely, he has appeared more prominently under that identity and has interacted with Conan. I think it's not unreasonable to assume that this identity had already been decided on when the series started with the idea existing some time before the first chapter was published.

So, if you take a look at the earliest characters Aoyama created, one character stands out as a possible candidate to be revealed as the rejuvenated boss. A character who did not originate in Detective Conan and would not appear in the series until that important story in vol. 30. I'm talking about the great teenage detective and arch rival of Kaito KID, Saguru Hakuba! Admittedly, I've only so-called "psychological clues" and a bit of educated guesswork to give as evidence, but they make sense to me. You can decide for yourself.

Saguru Hakuba: "Do you have any proof of that, Tom?"

Renya Karasuma is depicted in vol. 30. as an ominous silhouette with a pet crow perched on his left shoulder and, considering how he has clung to life, the passage of time is likely to great concern to him. Hakuba is hyper-conscience of the flow of time and can note time down to the millisecond, which is quite a developed sense of time for a 17-year-old. Something you would expect from a much older man whose "mind time" quickened its pace as he started to grow older. Since it's very possible Renya rejuvenated more than once, his "mind time" could have developed to the point where he's not only aware of the minutes and seconds ticking away, but the milliseconds as well – making it all the more interesting they appeared in vol. 30. A story in which clocks and outward appearances were integral to revealing the secret of Sunset Manor. You could read it as a metaphorical clue that someone more brighter and appealing was hidden behind that dark silhouette. This leads me to what is perhaps the most tangible clue.

Aoyama is very fond of parallel, or mirrored, characterization that he primarily reserves for his main and recurring characters. Jimmy/Conan and Kaitou KID are the most obvious example of this. But if you accept Hakuba and Renya are one and the same person, you can see this mirror approach to characterization all over their double identities.

I believe the most blatant clue is Renya's depiction, in vol. 30, as a dark silhouette with a black crow on his shoulder and Hakuba debuted in that same story carrying his pet hawk, Watson. Crows and hawks are natural enemies! Renya and Hakuba also mirror each other outwardly, an old, Moriarty-like master criminal and a young, Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective, but apparently, Renya tends to overthink his schemes – which makes him prone to mistakes. If my idea is correct, you can see this mistake reflected in his disguise.

Jimmy and Conan

A disguise that was put on a little too thick when he debuted, in Magic Kaitou, wearing a cape and deerstalker, which he later ditched, but could indicate Aoyama had already decided to make him the boss in Detective Conan. Renya is based on Professor Moriarty. So why not make him pose like a young detective who used to dress up like Sherlock Holmes who has the Japanese Arsène Lupin as his nemesis, which also gives him a double-layered motive to hunt down the KID. Firstly, KID is the kind of character who could become a potential threat to his organization and, one way or another, has to be eliminated. Secondly, a long-standing rivalry with a master criminal cements his position as one of the good guys. Thirdly, it would be a masterstroke to hide your main villain in another series and only have him appear in the main series as a novelty, crossover character to make some of the bigger stories even more special. It would be one of the greatest play on the least-likely-suspect!

There is, however, a weakness in my theory: Hakuba has two known relatives, a father and uncle, who can only be explained as members of the organization posing as relatives and help prop up his false identity. I know this is stretching things, but remember Renya has the resources and time to create such an elaborate identity that he could (literally) grow into over the years. And the relatives hold positions in society that can be very handy to a criminal organization. Hakuba father is the Superintendent General of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and his uncle is the owner of a research laboratory, which is another aspect that could be tied to the main storyline of Detective Conan.

When you take all of this together, there's one more thing that stands out as a potential clue. As previously mentioned, Hakuba made his first appearance, in Detective Conan, in the Sunset Manor Case and remarked that, "after 40 years," he was "finally able to step inside the scene of the tragedy" he had "long heard of only in frightened whispers" – not that he had never been inside before. And that the decades-old tragedy was hardly his "first reason for coming." In the story, his reason for being there is Kaitou KID, but if Hakuba is Renya, his remarks meant something very differently.

So what do you make of my theory? Do you think its close to the truth or just another internet fan theory that will turn out to be completely wrong? This is one post I would very much like some feedback on.

If this post happens to attract Detective Conan readers, I reviewed volumes 38-73 under the Gosho Aoyama tag. I also discussed two brilliantly original impossible crime episodes, The Case of the Seance Double Locked Room and The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly, and compiled a list with my favorite locked room mysteries from the manga series. Occasionally, I dip into The Kindaichi Case Files or Q.E.D., but the primary focus of the blog is on classic, or neo-classical, detective stories and novels. That where I'll return to with my next post. So stay tuned.

The Locked Room Reader VII: Miracles in Dutch

"There are, however, many more novels and short stories of impossible crimes that were published in other languages and that have never been translated into English."

- Robert Adey

Recently, I discussed three Dutch locked room mysteries, one novel and a pair of short stories, which reminded me there was a particular filler-post patiently waiting on the back-burner for my attention. There are a number of such posts that need to be written or updated, such as my lists of favorite locked room novels and short stories, but always wanted to redo the rundown of Dutch-language impossible crime stories I posted, years ago, on the GAD Wiki – which could now be augmented with additional material. I know most of you will probably grumble and growl at a catalog of mostly untranslated mysteries, but this blog-post is more of a personal note to myself.

You might have noticed my deep, burning and undying love for the impossible crime story. So, naturally, I have always been on the lookout for some homespun miracles of the criminal kind, but result was discouraging to say the least. For years, I was stuck at five titles, divided between two writers, which left me with practically no hope of adding anything worthwhile to that small stack of books. Until recently, that is, when they slowly began to accumulate in front of me out of nowhere. And they seemed to come crawling out of every nook and cranny of the genre: the Golden Decade (1930s), the post-WWII period and even the 21st century!

So now those five titles have grown into a modest stack of more than twenty Dutch-language locked room tales, which makes me want to wave the national driekleur (tricolor) and putting the band back together. Yes, that last part is a euphemism for reassembling the Dutch Empire and the recolonization of Southeast Asia. Who wants to be the Governor-General of the New Dutch East Indies?

But enough padding for one badly written filler-post. Let's take a crack at this list!

The Novels:

A.C. Baantjer's Een strop voor Bobby (A Noose for Bobby, 1963)

Appie Baantjer was a homicide detective with 40 years of service on the Amsterdam police-force, but during the early 1960s he made his first, tentative steps in becoming one of the most successful crime novelists of the Netherlands – selling close to eight million copies during his lifetime. A Noose for Bobby is where it all began. The first three-quarters of the plot is a study of character, pitting a police-inspector against a ruthless pimp, but the last quarter turns into a technical impossible crime story when the villain of the piece is found swinging from a rope in the proverbial locked room. A very old and worn trick is used to lock the door from the inside, but the clue of the electric wiring is something one would expect from John Rhode.

M.P.O. Books' De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010)

Marco Books is a grossly underrated writer of police-detective and thrillers, who occasionally takes a stab at the locked room problem, which began with this 2010 novel. The plot is primarily concerned with the murder of a doctor and the numerous attempts on the life of a local alderman, but towards the end there's an impossible poisoning behind multiple locked doors. A minor side-puzzle with a simplistic answer, but good enough to complement the overall plot.

M.P.O. Books' Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013)

A figure head of the Dutch criminal underworld, Fred Duijster, is found gutted in his tightly secured, fortress-like home. The windows were covered with steel shutters and the ground around the house is monitored with motion sensors that trigger over head lights, back and front, and activate the CCTV cameras – which captured only one person entering and leaving the premise at the time of the murder. But is he guilty? It's a locked room conundrum in the same vein (and quality) as Marcia Muller's The Tree of Death (1983) and Herbert Resnicow's The Gold Solution (1983), but with an even better explanation. As a matter of fact, I believe this to be one of the best titles on this list.

Willy Corsari's De misdaad zonder fouten (The Crime Without Mistakes or The Faultless Crime, 1927)

Once upon a time, the Belgian-born Willy Corsari was the Grand Dame of the Dutch-language detective story, but her work always struck me as extremely uneven and her lowest point can be found in her debut novel – which has a horribly misleading book-title. The impossibility concerned a man with a broken neck found in a house completely locked from the inside, but dissolved in an anti-detective story with twins and sleepwalkers. The final "twist" was excruciatingly bad. Luckily, Corsari would go on to write at least one decent impossible crime novel.

Willy Corsari's De onbekende medespeler (The Unknown Co-Player, 1931)

An early, standalone novel with a German movie-and television company as a backdrop and the opening sequence of the story shows dashes of imaginative writing – rewinding and fast-forwarding between scenes like a movie. Unfortunately, the impossible stabbing of an actress in front of a rolling camera is underplayed and has a dull, routine solution. However, it's a mountainous improvement on her first attempt at penning a locked room novel.

Willy Corsari's De voetstappen op de trap (The Footsteps on the Stairs, 1937)

A legitimate and not entirely unsuccessful treatment of the locked room trope! The book concerns the complications surrounding the murder of Sir John Judge, born as Jan Rechter, who left his native country to amass a fortune on the British Isles, but the past has patiently awaited his return home – ending with a deadly shooting inside a locked study. One important piece of information is withheld from the reader, but the policeman was unaware of it as well. So, at the time, I was willing to show some leniency on that point, because I had finally found a Dutch-language locked room mystery from the Golden Age.

Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970)

Cor Docter was a prolific pulp-writer, known as "The Prince of the Lending Libraries," but during the early 1970s he wrote three traditionally-styled detective novels and one of them was a first-class locked room story. Cold Woman in Kralingen is a topographical roman policier, situated in a neighborhood of Rotterdam, where the stabbing of a gardener leads Commissioner Daan Vissering to a shadowy society known as Kostbaar Kralingen (Precious Kralingen). During one of their regular meetings, one of their members is murdered inside a sealed bedroom and the murderer appears to have been trapped inside. The key was tossed, underneath the crack of the door, into the hallway where everyone had gathered, but when they battered down the door all they found was a murdered woman!

The solution is proof of Docter's credentials as a writer of pulp-fiction, but it's a good and original answer. One that makes this book one of the better titles on this list.

Robert van Gulik's Labyrint in Lan-fang (translated as The Chinese Maze Murders, 1956)

Robert van Gulik was a diplomat, sinologist and an author of a series of detective novels, short stories and novellas about a Chinese magistrate from the 7th century, Judge Dee – which played an vital role in popularizing historical mysteries. This is one of the first books in the series and dispatches Judge Dee to far-flung district on the Northwestern border of the Chinese empire, Lan-fang, which is plagued by barbarians, corruption and murder. One of the victims, General Ding, was stabbed in the throat with a small, peculiar looking dagger with a poisoned blade, but the General was holed up in a hermetically sealed mansion when the murderer struck. The impossible crime angle is not as strong as in other locked room novels in this series, but the book, as a whole, is great!

Robert van Gulik's Fantoom in Foe-lai (translated as The Chinese Gold Murders, 1959)

Chronologically, The Chinese Gold Murders is the first book in the series and tells the story of Judge Dee's first post as a magistrate of a somber, mournful place, called Peng-lai, where tales are abound of the restless dead. One of them is the previous magistrate of the district who died under mysterious circumstances in his locked library. This is easily one of the best entries in the series!

Robert van Gulik's Het rode paviljoen (The Red Pavilion, 1961)

Judge Dee and Ma Joong are on a return journey home, to the district of Poo-yang, which brings them to Paradise Island. Upon their arrival, the island is busy with the celebration surrounding the Festival of the Dead and the only room is the cursed pavilion of the book-title. A place where people have died under unsavory and inexplicable circumstances, which Judge Dee get to witness first hand as he has to explain three seemingly impossible deaths that has occurred in the room – one of them discovered by the judge himself. I remember it as one of the best and most solidly plotted Judge Dee novels, but really should re-read the book to see if it holds up.

Ivans' De bosgeest (The Forest Spirit, 1926)

Under the single-name pseudonym of "Ivans," Jakob van Schevichaven had the honor of becoming the first commercially successful crime writer of the Netherlands. The Forest Spirit is a strange, early example of the serial killer novel: a number of forest rangers were beaten to death in a dark, sprawling wood in Germany. Someone had caved in the back of their heads and in one particular case the murderer left no footprints in the soft soil surrounding the body. However, this impossibility is mentioned only briefly and the revelation of the murderer immediately tells you have the no-footprints trick was done. Not the most impressive entry on this list.

Edward Multon's De onzichtbare doder (The Invisible Slayer, 1963)

A thoroughly bad "detective" story streaked with second-rate thriller material and only a token locked room murder. I recommend you read the review if you want to know more about the content of the story.

Frans and Tineke Steenmeijer's Moord in het provinciehuis (Murder at Provincial House, 1999)

Only the first two chapters deal with the impossible murder of a provincial politician, shot to death during a weekly round-table meeting of the College of Deputies of the Province of Friesland, which is too short to make this really a noteworthy as a locked room mystery. However, the locked room angle, as short as it is, made for one of the better parts of the book.

Berts Wiersema's De ongeloofelijke ontsnapping van Tengere Tinus (The Unbelievable Escape of Tengere Tinus, 2010)

I've not read this book myself, but know of its existence and will pick it up if I ever stumble across a copy. The story is geared to primary school children and is about a couple of aspiring detectives, Iris and Ko, who help the police figure out how a criminal pulled of an escape from a warehouse – which he had barricaded from the inside and was surrounded by the police on the outside.

Short Stories:

Bertus Aafjes' "De zaak van de bronzen waterreservoirs" ("The Case of the Bronze Water Reservoirs," collected in De vertrapte pioenroos, 1973; The Trampled Peony)

Bertus Aafjes was a world traveler, poet and writer whose oeuvre included several volumes of short stories and a single novella-length mystery about a venerable Japanese magistrate, Judge Ooka – an 18th century judge who presided over the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The impossibility in this story falls in the same category as the Egg of Columbus and the Gordian knot. A dishonest bronze caster has been overcharging the prize of the titular water reservoirs, claiming he has used more bronze than he probably did, but, at the time, they had no means to weigh the huge reservoirs. So how could they proof the dishonesty of the bronze caster? Judge Ooka's scheme is as clever as it's simple and is arguably the most original story on this list.

Willy Corsari's "Sporen in de sneeuw" ("Tracks in the Snow," collected in De weddenschap van Inspecteur Lund, 1941; Inspector Lund Makes a Bet)

A broken leg and the story of a long-forgotten, unsolved and impossible, murder turns Lund into an armchair detective, but the solution was pedestrian and uninspired.

Anna van Doorn's "De dichter die zichzelf opsloot" ("The Poet Who Locked Himself In," collected in De geliefde die in het veen verdween en andere mysteries, 2017; The Lover Who Disappeared in the Bog and Other Mysteries)

Corbijn and De Jong are particuliere onderzoekers (private investigators) who specialize in cold cases and their first recorded investigation concerns the apparent suicide of an obscure and reclusive poet in a log cabin in the woods – where he withdrew from the world to slave over a line of poetry in solitude. There he was found, shot in the face, with traces of gunshot residue on his hand and a double-barreled shotgun next to the body. The door was latched from the inside and the only window could not be opened. So if it's not suicide than how could a murderer have entered and left the log cabin?

One of the better locked room tricks on this list!

Robert van Gulik's "Moord en ambtelijke haarkloverij" ("The Red Tape Murder," collected in Zes zaken voor Rechter Tie, 1961; Judge Dee at Work)

Judge Dee investigates the murder of Commander Soo at a military fortress, shot with an arrow loosened from a room on the other side of the complex, where only one person was present who could have pulled the bowstring. However, this person is proven innocent by Judge Dee and the solution turned this straightforward murder case into a locked room mystery.

Robert van Gulik's "De twee bedelaars" ("The Two Beggars," collected in Zes zaken voor Rechter Tie, 1961; Judge Dee at Work)

A very minor locked room tale in which Judge Dee witnesses a ghostly apparition escape from a watched, moonlit, garden with a gate that's securely locked and barred from the inside.

Havank's "De gegrendelde kamer" ("The Bolted Room," collected De Schaduw & Co, 1957; The Shadow & Co)

Charles C.M. Carlier, a.k.a. De Schaduw (The Shadow), is called on to investigate the alleged suicide of a company director, who apparently shot himself inside his private office, which is nicely resolved in a handful of pages.

Ashe Stil's "De dode kamer" ("The Dead Room," collected in De dode kamer, 1996; The Dead Room)

Ashe Stil is a historian and the author of a series of historical mystery novels and short stories about Willem Lootsman, a waterschout (water bailiff) in the Amsterdam harbor of the Dutch Golden Age, which may be the Dutch counterpart to the historical detective stories by Paul Doherty – as at least two short stories are locked room mysteries. This story is about a greedy merchant found dead inside a hermetically sealed vault.

Ashe Stil's "Het zilveren pistool" ("The Silver Pistol," collected in Het zilveren pistool, 2005; The Silver Pistol)

A rich merchant is found murdered inside an upstairs room, locked from the inside, but there was an open window. However, the plot-description noted that the window offered no means of escape to the murderer. So you can expect me to explore this series in the hopefully not so distant future.

That's the last one for now, but, surely, this blog-post will be updated in the future and compiling this list gave me an idea for another post, because most of the solutions have something in common – a preferred technique, or approach, to the locked room problem. Something that shows a clear difference in the mindset of Angelo and Germanic mystery writers, but hey, that's subject for another time.

Fatal Flaws: A Short Overview of Ruined Detective Stories

"These little things a very significant."

- Miss Marple (Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder, 1976)

Earlier this month, I reviewed Family Matters (1933) by Anthony Rolls, which took an unconventional approach to telling an inverted detective story and the narrative had all the elements of a genre-classic, but was unable to sustain itself and ended with a whimper – an open-ending that managed to be simultaneously lazy and pretentious. So hardly a satisfying and rewarding read. However, the book made me reflect back on similar detective novels that were on their way of becoming (minor) classics, but slipped with the finish-line in sight.

It has been a while since I slapped together a filler-post and thought doing a quick rundown of a handful of them would make for a nice fluff piece. You may abandon this post, if you want, and come back for one of my regular review, which should be up within the next day or so. Or stick around. It's entirely up to you.

I'll be running through this short list in non-specific order and will begin with Agatha Christie. Or rather with an observation about one of her series-characters, Miss Jane Marple, who's one of Christie's two iconic detective figures, but there's remarkable difference between the Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot series – namely a severe lack of classic titles in the former. Miss Marple never handled a case of the same caliber as Murder on the Orient Express (1934), The A.B.C. Murders (1936) and Death on the Nile (1937). However, there's one Miss Marple novel that came close to matching the brilliance of her Belgian counterpart.

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962) has an American starlet of the silver screen, Marina Gregg, descending upon the sleepy village of St. Mary Mead, but soon learns that an English village can be as dangerous as a dark, grimy back alley in the States. One of her house-guests dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail and the explanation for this specific murder was one of Christie's last triumphs.

The relationship between the victim and murderer, combined with the powerful and well-hidden motive, stuck together with simplistic brilliance, but the equally powerful effect the explanation could've achieved was ruined when Christie allowed the murderer to become completely unhinged – committing several additional murders along the way. It cheapened and lessened the impact of the reason behind the first murder, which robbed the series of a book that could've stood toe-to-toe with such Poirot titles as Peril at End House (1932), Sad Cypress (1940) and Five Little Pigs (1943).

Logically, the murderer should've been stone cold sane, completely unrepentant and never went pass that first murder, which had a solid, original and very human reason behind it. I've always wondered if a much younger Christie would've made the same mistake. A textbook example that sometimes less can be more.

You can also ruin a potential series-classic by punctuating the plot of the story with sheer stupidity. Case in point: The American Gun Mystery (1933) by Ellery Queen.

The American Gun Mystery had all the potential to be one of the best entries from Ellery Queen's plot-orientated nationality series, which has a great premise and a memorable backdrop: a sports arena, the Colosseum, where a horseback rider is gunned down during a rodeo show with twenty thousand potential suspects and eyewitnesses in attendance – topped off with the impossible disappearance of the murder weapon. I distinctly remember how much I had been enjoying this slice of old-fashioned Americana, presented as an original puzzle detective, but all of that enthusiasm dissipated upon learning how the gun was made to vanish. It was one of those rare instances I actually wanted to fling a book across the room in frustration and the hiding place of the gun seems to be a stumbling block for most readers.

And that's why The American Gun Mystery is never mentioned in the same breath as The French Powder Mystery (1930), The Dutch Shoe Mystery (1931) and The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932).

Sometimes you can be on the right track, but simply bite off more than you could chew and a good example of this is Herbert Brean's still beloved Wilders Walk Away (1948).

Curt Evans described the plot of the book as "a fusion of Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr," which is an apt description, because the story is basically one of Queen's Wrightsville novels as perceived by Carr. The protagonist is a freelance photographer, Reynold Frame, who travels to Wilders Lane, Vermon, which is named after the founding family of the place. A family with a peculiar tradition dating back to eighteenth century: members of the Wilders clan have the tendency to escape the yawning grave by simply vanishing into thin air.

So what's not to like, you might ask? Well, the solutions to all of the impossibilities have some of the most routine, common-place explanations you could imagine. It stands in stark contrast with everything that came previous in the book. Barry Ergang hit the nail on the head, in his review, when observing that Wilders Walk Away appeared as "a companion to The Three Coffins (1935) and Rim of the Pit (1944) for ultimate greatness," but that "degree of feeling didn't sustain itself" and that's how I felt when reading the book. A very likable and readable detective story, but the wasted potential is painful to behold. Everything about the book screamed classic... until you reached the ending.

Brean would go on to redeem himself with the superb Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1952), the equally good The Clock Strikes Thirteen (1954) and the very amusing The Traces of Brillhart (1961), but they (sadly) never garnered the same attention as Wilders Walks Away.

Finally, I have a prize-winning book, Kay Cleaver Strahan's Footprints (1929), which could have become a personal favorite of mine, but shot itself in the foot in a way that's very similar to Rolls' Family Matters.

Footprints garnered some attention upon its publication for toying with conventions and plot-devices that were not very well established or popular at the time. One of them is that the book qualifies as a semi-historical mystery novel and this past story is entirely told through a series of old, crumbling letters. A story that took place on an Oregon farm in the early 1900s, which has, rather originally, a murder that could one of two types of impossible crimes: either the murderer escaped from a locked room to get to the victim or passed over a field of snow without leaving any footprints.

So you can imagine I was completely hooked by the halfway mark. I loved the depiction of family life on an American farm in the early twentieth century with an apparently innovative impossible crime plot at its core, but the vaguely written ending only hinted at the murderer's identity. And not a single letter was wasted on attempting to explain the impossible situation. A postmodernist would no doubt love such an ending in a structured genre like us, but I wanted, as Carr would say, strangle the author and lynch the publisher. They were really lucky they had already kicked the bucket when I finished the book.

Cleaver did redeem herself with her second locked room novel, Death Traps (1930), which was a competent, if rather conversational, piece of work with an actual ending!

So far my lamentations on several detective novels I really wanted to like, but proved to be a let down, in one way or another, when the final chapter rolled around. I hope this will be, for now, the last blog-post with my whining about bad or disappointing detective stories. My next review looks to be that of a good mystery novel and have something interesting (and untranslated) for the one after that. And both of them fall in the locked room category. Please try to act a little bit surprise about that!