Owl & Raccoon: "WDYG" (2013) and "Not With a Bang" (2016) by Matt Ingwalson

Matt Ingwalson is a public speaker and independent writer who self-published three mystery novellas that are "part hardboiled police procedural and part classical locked room mystery," which features two ex-SWAT team members, Owl and Raccoon, who became detectives with the Missing Persons divisions – encountering more than one seemingly impossible disappearance. I read the first novella, "The Single Staircase" (2012), back in 2019 and stands as one of the most unconventional pieces of impossible crime fiction I've read to date. 

What makes this short-lived series standout is not merely the attempt to marry the modern crime novel with the traditional detective story, which has been done before. It's minimalists approach to the characterization, plotting and storytelling.

Ingwalson surgically removed everything from the police procedural and locked room mystery except the absolute bare essentials with short, unadorned sentences and several dozens of chapters running anywhere from a half-a-page to three or four pages – allowing to point a laser-focus on those bare essentials. Someway, somehow, this radical modernistic style actually worked with the author revealing himself to be somewhat of a master of the whydunit. More than the who-and how, Ingwalson is interested in explaining why such an artificial, time-worn trope as the locked room mystery turned up in a very modern, realistically presented setting. This is especially true for the last two novellas in the series. 

"WDYG" (2013) brings Owl and Raccoon to a mall where 17-year-old Amanda McDonald was last seen shopping with her three school friends, Sarah Neils, Haley Comet and Katrina Dempsey. When they arrived at the food court, Amanda told her friends she had to use the bathroom while they waited right near the entrance. They never moved from that spot. After 15 minutes, they began to wonder what happened to her or why she didn't respond to their text messages ("where did you go?"). Katrina walked into the bathroom to discover Amanda's shopping bags in the corner of a stall, "paper bags ripped up" and "the clothes she bought all over the floor." Amanda's purse is later found in a trashcan, but she's nowhere to be found. She had vanished as if by magic!

Owl and Raccoon have a tricky situation on their hands, because they have no idea how reliable their witnesses actually are. They were texting and "teenage girls, you know? They lie." But why? She apparently had no reason to run away from home, nor was there's a way she could have been kidnapped without it being seen. So what happened? A case complicated as their witnesses could also be bratty, eye-rolling suspects who keep their lips closely sealed. Not to mention the discovery of a body (not Amanda), which could get the case assigned to another division.

The solution has some great synergy between the inexplicable disappearance of Amanda and the more darker, sordid plot-elements, one being a consequence of the other, but particularly liked how the illogical side of a logical decision fueled the plot – hinged on a rarely-used motive to rig up a locked room. John Dickson Carr gave four motives in The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) to create a locked room scenario, but one that's rarely mentioned or used is (ROT13) perngvat na vzcbffvoyr fvghngvba vf gb trg bhg bs n qnatrebhf fvghngvba be qvirefvba. My only misgiving is that the vanishing-act has an obvious answer staring you in the face, which, yes, made the why even more perplexing. And there was more than enough reason why Owl and Raccoon were "chasing shadows" before finally getting to the truth. But the only reason why it took Owl so long to figure out the vanishing-act, is because the plot wouldn't allow an earlier disclosure.

So, besides that one very minor flaw, "WDYG" is a glimpse of what the crime and detective genre could have looked like had it continued to build on its rich history instead of discarding it. 

"Not With a Bang" (2016) is the third and, as of this writing, last entry in the series and poses a spectacular impossible disappearance during a hostage situation. A commuter stops in the middle of Five Points, a busy intersection, blocking traffic in all directions. A police man approaching the bus is greeted with gunfire and calls-up the SWAT. Fifteen minutes later, there were "twelve patrol unites all over the damn place" with snipers covering both sides of the bus and a drone directly overhead. A teenage boy opens a window and yells, "please don't shoot my dad."

The boy is quickly identified as 17-year-old Todd Gonzales who disappeared the previous day when "he was allegedly snatched at gunpoint by his absentee father," Cody Jacobi. What follow were more shots and "a stampede of hostages" being released from the bus, which left Cody with only his son as a hostage. But then Cody opened a window and yelled, "you tell that bitch goodbye for us, we'll see her in hell." So they stormed the bus after throwing a flash bang grenade and tear gas canisters through a window, but they found Cody alone. There was "no trace of the teenaged boy who'd cried desperately through the window just a few minutes before."

What a way to begin your story! But the premise is perhaps a little misleading and you shouldn't expect some kind of thriller with an impossible crime angle, because everything quickly calms down.

JJ, of The Invisible Event, who directed the fandom's attention to the series back in 2015 and described "Not With a Bang" perfectly as "a deliberately, almost obstinately, lo-fi undertaking." Owl and Raccoon have a free hand to investigate the disappearance of the boy as his father is safely in custody, but says he has no idea what happened to his son or where he could be. So they have to retrace the steps of father and son during those twenty-four hours and dig through their family history, but "the not knowing" part of working Missing Persons is beginning to take its toll on the two detectives. 

"Not With a Bang" closes the door on the series without locking it so tightly that a fourth novella, or perhaps a full-length novel, is out of the question. A potential sequel is actually alluded to in the penultimate chapter. Even if a new story never materializes, this short-lived series received a fitting and satisfying conclusion with Ingwalson's most ingenious and daring locked room-trick. A trick with a very precarious and flashy setup demanding a good deal of motivation to convince the reader, which here was quite a hurdle to clear, but a lot of thought was put into the motive – dovetailing it with the backstory, characterization and clues. Add a good, old-fashioned piece of locked room trickery, brazenly performed in front of "a dozen rifle scopes," you have somewhat of a minor gem on your hands.

Matt Ingwalson wrote three beautifully paced, well balanced and thoroughly unconventional locked room stories, which shines a spotlight on the why of the impossibilities and how they came about. So they succeeded as both traditional, plot-driven detective stories and very modern, hardboiled police procedurals. More importantly, the Owl and Raccoon series possibly could be one of those extremely rare cases where a modernist build on tradition to create something truly good and special. Even demonstrating the modernistic dictum that sometimes less can be more. This is why Owl & Raccoon: Locked (2016), collecting all three novellas, deserves a place on the shelves of every self respecting and fanatical locked room reader.

Owl & Raccoon: "The Single Staircase" (2012) by Matt Ingwalson

Matt Ingwalson is an award-winning, independent author whose "desert noir" novel, Sin Walks into the Desert (2015), was named Best Indie Book of 2015, but what brought him to my attention was a blog-post by "JJ," of The Invisible Event, who briefly discussed two of Ingwalson's "Owl and Raccoon" novellas – a police procedural series focused on impossible disappearances! So it was finally time to give these "tightly architected mysteries" a shot.

"The Single Staircase" (2012) is the first of only three recorded cases of "Owl" and "Raccoon," together with "WDYG" (2013) and "Not With a Bang" (2016), which were collected in Owl & Raccoon: Locked (2016).

Detectives Drazen and Boska earned their nicknames during their time with the local SWAT team: Drazen is a smart guy who "knew people upside down" and got nicknamed "Owl," while Boska is "sneaky and fast" like a raccoon. And these names stuck with them when they became Missing Persons detectives.

"The Single Staircase" has a deceptively simple premise. David and Daphne Grey put there three-month-old baby, Sophia, to bed in the nursery on the third-floor of their condo. All of the windows on the third-floor were locked from the inside and the single staircase "landed right in the family room," where the Greys were watching a movie, but after the movie ended, Daphne went to the nursery – only to find an empty crib. They searched the house for over an hour, but a three-month-old can't get very far on foot or "plot out a game of hide and seek." So they call in the police.

Owl and Raccoon have two impossibilities to explore. Firstly, the parents are speaking the truth and someone, somehow, found a way to take a baby from a locked and watched nursery on the third-floor. Secondly, the parents are lying and either had a hand in the death of their child or have hidden the body. A pretty messed up puzzle either way you look at it.

A number of possibilities arise from these two scenarios and they're thoroughly explored, which gave me the opportunity to come up with my own solution. Naturally, it turned out to be incorrect. However, the clues appeared to be there.

My incorrect solution was based on descriptions of the family room, on the second-floor, which was described as "too small" with a 15 feet couch and a flatscreen TV "mounted on the wall right up against the stairs" – while the first-floor only had a desk, laptop and some bookcases. A second clue (to me) was when David and Daphne were found sound asleep in the waiting room of the police station. One of the detectives even asks, "do people about to be accused of their missing child's murder fall asleep in police stations?" What if they were physically exhausted from moving two rooms around?

So, based on these poorly interpreted facts, I figured the body had been hidden behind the now invisible door of the cupboard under the stairs. The door was made invisible, physically and psychologically, by papering it over and moving the family room from the first to the second-floor, because a TV had to be mounted to the spot to psychologically mask that there used to be a cupboard door there. I was even convinced Chapter 17 was a big hint that confirmed my theory.

I still liked my false solution, but it would probably disqualify "The Single Staircase" as a proper locked room mystery. However, the actual solution makes the story hang on to that status by a very thin thread. I can see why and how it still qualifies as an impossible crime story, but it surely is highly unconventional. And that would be an apt description for the story as a whole.

Ingwalson took an unconventional and minimalist route with very short, snappy chapters and dialogue. Very little characterization in spite of the inner monologues and an epilogue preceding the final chapter. Structurally, I was bizarrely reminded of R.H.W Dillard's The Book of Changes (1974), but, plot-wise, is actually consistent with a laser-focus on the central puzzle and an unusual, but good, solution that has a motive rarely found in Golden Age mysteries – making it a notable title in the fascinating list of 21st century impossible crime fiction. Even if the who-and why turned out to be more interesting than the how.

So I'll definitely return to this series in the future, but, for my next read, I'll be tackling a more conventional detective novel from the 1930s.