The Unicorn Murders (1935) by Carter Dickson

In May, the British Library Crime Classics series of reprints is releasing a brand new, long overdue edition of John Dickson Carr's fourth Sir Henry Merrivale novel, The Unicorn Murders (1935) – published as by "Carter Dickson." I actually wanted to revisit Poison in Jest (1932) and The Plague Court Murders (1934) next or get to one of those previous few, unread Carr's like The Nine Wrong Answers (1952) or Deadly Hall (1971). But when I heard the British Library was going to reprint The Unicorn Murders, I decided to give it a second read instead.

My memories of The Unicorn Murders is fragmented, like a highlight reel, remembering being impressed with how it conducted a three-way danse macabre between the turn-of-the-century thriller, the 1930s detective story and the impossible crime tale. So let's find out how those memories stand up to a refresher with the finer details filled back in.

The Unicorn Murders begins with Ken Blake, who had previously appeared in The Plague Court Murders, on holiday in France. A lazy holiday during which he paid no attention to screaming newspaper headlines nor the public chatter about two names, Flamande and Gasquet. Believing them to be either rivaling boxers or cabinet ministers, which they're not. And not knowing lands him in a spot of trouble. But his adventure really begins when he spots a familiar face, Evelyn Cheyne. She spots him and approaches him with lines from "The Lion and the Unicorn" nursery rhyme, which he finishes and she tells him she's glad H.M. had paired her with him on this assignment. Blake has no idea what she's talking about, but plays along and learns the mission concerns Sir George Ramsden, of the Foreign Office, who's bringing “the unicorn” from France to London – nobody exactly knows what it is. Only that has garnered the interest of the Great Flamande, "the most picturesque criminal France has sported for years," but Gasquet, the Chief Inspector of the Surete, is hot on his heels. Both the arch-criminal and master detective are known as masters of disguise whose true faces are known to practically nobody ("it's wild, it's fantastic, but it's true"). Flamande, as is customary for a gentlemen thief, publicly announces he would be on the airplane with Sir George before reaching its destination.

So a duel, of sorts, between the arch-criminal and master detective complicated by the dangerous possibility Flamande made the first kill in a career of mostly whimsical capers ("...pinched the clock out of the courtroom while that Commissaire was giving evidence..."). A wounded, dying man was found in a Marseilles park with a horrondous wound between his eyes that, according to the police surgeon, could have only been caused by "the long, sharp horn of an animal." And the last words the victim spoke was the word "unicorn." Pretty soon, they find themselves in the middle of a comedy of errors fueled, madcap chase that convinces Blake both of them should "shortly be the object of one of the biggest police-hunts since Landru." This madcap chase ends in a three-way collision when Blake and Cheyne bump into H.M. nearby Chateau de l'Ile where they witness an airplane make a forced landing. Yes, that airplane!

When the stranded party seek shelter at the chateau, they find the Comte d'Andrieu expected their arrival. Flamande asked him to prepare for their arrival with the promise of "a unicorn-hunt." So the problems go from bad to worse as the causeway is washed away, no phone and a great detective who's as big a mystery as the criminal he's pursuing. And then one of them is killed under seemingly baffling circumstances.

 

 

This impossible murder is undoubtedly one of Carr's most creative, original and trickiest take on the impossible crime, especially in the subcategory known as "invisible killers," but not another simple, disappointing redressing of G.K. Chesterton's "The Invisible Man" (1911) – on the contrary! Like the victim in Marseilles, the second victim ended up with a mysterious, inexplicable wound in his forehead, but this murder was witnessed by several people. In the gallery, they saw the victim grab his head, "something horrible was happening to his head," scream and tumble down two flight of stairs. When they examine the body, even a layman can see "something had been pulled out of that wound," but there simply was no time to pull out a weapon without being seen.

Or, to sum the situation up more accurately, "if he was killed at the top of the stairs, he was either stabbed by an invisible man" or "shot with a bullet which pulls itself out of the wound and flies away."

Carr created one of his densest impossible murders with multiple moving parts relaying on various aspects of the plot and the floor plan here is not merely ornamental. If anything, the story probably needed a few more floor plans of the chateau towards the end with the explanation demanding your full attention. Where a lesser writer would have killed, or bogged down, the ending with a long, tedious explanation in minute detail, Carr's talent to make the utterly fantastic and fanciful seem plausible shines throughout. Certainly helped Carr had a knack for wrapping clues, red herrings and a good dose foreshadowing in an appealing, unputdownable narrative keeping you glued to the pages. Even when it gets tricky or a bit technical. I liked how the nature of that strange, apparently invisible weapon was handled with some of Carr's patented brazen clues and foreshadowing you can only truly appreciate upon a second read.

I think the central impossible crime forms a solid foundation for the rest of the story to stand on, which is often even more fantastic with its dueling masters of disguise, impersonations and rivaling detectives, invisible unicorns with homicidal tendencies and bizarre incidents – like someone tossing his suitcase out of a window. The tightly-drawn, executed impossible crime not only did its parts in keeping this whole three-ring circus consistent, it also allowed the story to succeed as half parody, half serious detective story. Carr obviously intended The Unicorn Murders to be a parody, or homage, to the greats of the early French crime-and detective fiction, Maurice Leblanc and Gaston Leroux. Leblanc is mentioned in the story, but the story itself unmistakably was inspired by Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) and La parfum de la dame en noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black, 1908). Rivaling detectives and impossible crime from the former and the one-man siege of a chateau from the latter.

So you can say Carr made things really difficult by trying to juggle the characters, rivaling detectives and criminals with an outlandish situation "straight out of a farce or a dream," while balancing between the thriller and a tricky, complicated detective story – while also balancing between farce and a serious detective story. Like I said, a lesser writer would have made a mess out of it, but Carr made it work because he took it seriously despite the humorous, often farcical tone. So, in many ways, The Unicorn Murder is almost more impressive a wire-walking act than The Three Coffins (1935) or the previously mentioned The Plague Court Murders. So a perfect vehicle for H.M. who's the only true rival to Gasquet and the doom of Flamande, but getting there is not without some dangerous and sometimes amusing obstacles. I really enjoyed Gasquet's false-solution putting part of the blame on H.M. ("...his senile dotage").

H.M. doesn't always have to be on page to be amusing. Blake recalled in the first chapter meeting H.M. at Whitehall, "lumbering along with his head down, shaking his fist and cursing certain government officials with an audible fluency which nearly got him mobbed as pro-German." When the times come, H.M. demonstrates he's very far from a comic relief sleuth, but no less an entertaining one!

The Unicorn Murders finds Carr and H.M. at the top of their game and at their most fun, however, it's also one of Carr's least plausible and realistic detective novels. Pure fantasy with all the logic of a mad dream, but you really have to put your mind in the right frame and go along in order to fully enjoy The Unicorn Murders. If that's no problem, I don't think I could recommend The Unicorn Murder more. Very glad I took this one off the shelf for refresher.

Note for the curious: other people have noted H.M. utters the phrase "oh, Archons of Athens," which is usually uttered by Carr's other famous creation, Dr. Gideon Fell. Some have wondered if this was a slip on Carr's part, but always suspected it was a hint. The Unicorn Murders was published when John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson were two separate entities. It was speculated about, but not officially confirmed. Maybe it was a way to let the keen eyed readers know it was him writing the H.M. series.

Best Served Cold: Case Closed, vol. 96 by Gosho Aoyama

This is probably going to be a slightly shorter review than usual, because Gosho Aoyama's 96th volume of Case Closed only has one completed story, book-ended by the conclusion and setup to stories from the previous and next volume – which doesn't make for a great reading experience. Ho-Ling Wong noted the same problem in his 2019 review of vol. 96 ("...one of the worst volumes of the last decade or so"). The reader has been warned!

So this volume begins with the conclusion of the "The Female Officer Serial Murders" setup in the last two chapters of the previous volume. Normally, that's done in the opening chapter, but there three more chapters. Had it been tidied up in one, or two, chapters it would have been like any other volume in the series with one conclusion and two complete stories. Maybe even a one-chapter setup for the opening story of the next volume, but I'm padding now.

Yumi Miyamoto and Neako Miike, officer of the traffic department, get drag into the case when two of their colleagues are murdered. First victim was Sergeant Momosaki, found in a park, who "used her last moments to point at a swing set" as a dying message and killer struck again later that same day – throwing Lieutenant Shiori Yagi out of a building. She also used her last moments to give her colleagues a clue to the killer. But the killer left a calling card behind at both crime scenes: a bent 200-yen coin that has a depiction of cherry blossom ("...emblem of the Japanese police") engraved on it. So the murderer obviously has it out for female officers of the traffic department. There are three suspects who were involved in traffic incident, days before the murders, during which they had a heated argument with several female traffic officers. So pretty much one of those familiar who-of-the-three stories, but disliked how very similar, somewhat specific motive was tacked on all three suspects. On the other hand, I liked the idea how every cop in trouble, whether they died or survived, tried to transfer information to their colleagues in the form of a dying message. The meaning behind those dying messages form a pleasing thematic pattern, but an idea that needed a better, longer treatment than it received here. By the way, this story also provides a resolution for the Detective Chiba and Neako Miike story-arc going all the way back to vol. 75.

The first, only complete story in this volume is a self-parody of the Wile E. Coyote vs. the Road Runner feud between Jirokichi Sebastian and Kaito KID. I started out as a big fan of Jirokichi trying to ensnare KID with his elaborate, expensively baited and widely publicized traps. Their first few duels from volumes 44 and 61 were series highlights, but suppose they were hard acts to follow as their last few encounters have been a little underwhelming. So not a bad decision to go for a self-parody, because it would have been worst Jirokichi/KID caper to date. Jirokichi has new bait to tempt the KID, the Fairy's Lip, "one of the biggest conch pearls in the world," but how to present and protect it poses a problem. Fortunately, a familiar face turns up, Inspector Takaaki Morofushi, who advises to have the conch pearl exhibited frozen inside a block of ice and placed in a guarded, makeshift room of tempered glass. And some other high tech precautions that should prevent KID from getting out of the glass room with the pearl.

So far, a fairly typical setup for a Kaito KID caper, but this time you get to see KID at work and he's not disguised as Inspector Takaaki Morofushi. KID has hidden himself among the guards posted around the glass room with the block of ice, but is having second thoughts when notices "those two sleuths," Conan and Harley, "plus a cop who's not a total dummy," but an incident makes him decides to go ahead with the heist. From the start, KID is nearly caught out, but things get farcical when he takes the place of someone in Conan and Harley's group. You can see one scene coming from that very moment and this gag, sadly enough, carries the story. KID steals the ring and solution is OK-ish, but still no idea how he could have pulled it off, under those circumstances, within ten minutes. So fun enough, but nothing more than that.

The last story begins with Conan, Rachel, Sera, Serena and her boyfriend, Makoto, coming out of the theater having just watched The Avengers The Amazers movie when they stumble into a hostage situation. Makoto, a karate champion, jumps to the rescue only to discover he interrupted a shoot for the TV series 48 Detectives. And the gun toting criminal he kicked into next week was a stuntman. So now they need a stuntman and they immediately see potential in the karate champion, but Makoto's stint as a stand-in stuntman ends with two murders on set. And, according to tradition, will be concluded in the next volume.

So not much to say, except Sera trying to pry the truth out of Conan and even asks Rachel if she's ever seen Conan and Jimmy together. Very much to her surprise, Rachel tells Sera how Conan went to a school play Jimmy was in ("...Jimmy solved a mystery during the play, while the brat sat in the audience pouting"). I believe this is a reference to a story not reviewed on this blog and barely remember it, but how it's describe here makes it sound like a hilarious case of bi-location in close proximity, especially from Sera's perspective – who's convinced Conan is Jimmy ("...Conan and I picked Jimmy up from his house the next morning").

There's not much else to say about this volume, except how this series structures its serialized chapters and volumes worked against it. I simply recommend everyone reading this in the near of distant future to read volumes 95, 96 and 97 without big gaps of time between them.

Invitation to Murder (1953) by Ab Visser

Ab Visser was a Dutch writer, editor, critic, reviewer, poet and a tireless advocate of the Dutch detective story, who tried to position himself as the Frederic Dannay of the Low Countries, but not with the same rate of success as his American counterpart – not even remotely close. Between the late 1960s and early '80s, Visser launched two ill-fated, short-lived magazines, Pulp and Plot, that lasted only a handful of issues. During the early '60s, Visser took on the editorship of an ambitious project, "Zodiac Mysteries," which would have consisted of twelve, zodiac-themed detective novels from a dozen different writers. But for some reason, the project was abandoned after the eighth novel was published. At least we got Ton Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) out of it!

Another problem is that Visser was more active as a mystery critic, editor and reviewer than writing actual mystery and detective novels. Visser wrote a couple of crime thrillers like De samenzwering (The Conspiracy, 1965), De kat en de rat (The Cat and the Rat, 1967), Het kind van de rekening (The Child Who Paid the Price, 1969) and the short story collection De chanteur (The Blackmailer, 1970). Only one true, classically-styled detective novel.

Visser submitted Uitnodiging tot moord (Invitation to Murder, 1953) to the detective story competition, organized by A.W. Bruna & Zoon, but the first prize went to, what's considered today, the first homegrown hardboiled thriller, Parels voor Nadra (Pearls for Nadra, 1953) – penned by journalist Joop van den Broek. Eline Capit came in second with De Wolven en de schapen (The Wolves and the Sheep, 1953) and was published in America two years later under the title Run from the Sheep. Third place unaccountably was awarded to Bob van Oyen's terrible Na afloop moord (Afterwards, Murder, 1953). Visser's Invitation to Murder won one, of four, consolation prizes alongside Madzy Ford's De speurder zoekt een spook (The Sleuth in Search of a Ghost, 1953), Bert Japin's Stenen voor brood (Stones for Bread, 1953) and Josine Reuling's Poeder en parels (Powder and Pearls, 1953). So a Dutch detective story competition is won by a hardboiled thriller, a crime comedy and something amounting to an anti-detective story. I swear, this country is as hostile an environment to the traditional detective story as Mars is to Earth life.

Invitation to Murder got published and reprinted in the 1953 Bruna omnibus together with the Ford and Japin novels, before it dropped into obscurity for the next thirty years. A year before his death, Visser edited the anthology 3 klassieken uit de Nederlandse misdaad literatuur (3 Classics from Dutch Crime Literature, 1981) and placed Invitation to Murder among the classics. If you're wondering, the other two classics are August Defresne's Moord (Murder, 1931) and Ben van Eysselsteijn's Romance in F-Dur (1934). Not that it helped either the book or its author as both were forgotten again when Visser died in 1982.

So why did I mark Visser's Invitation to Murder down as a Dutch detective novel of potential interest on these shaky credentials? Visser reportedly wrote it as an homage and parody of Agatha Christie with nursery rhymes as a leitmotiv for murder. I thought that sounded like a fun, harmless mystery and a safer bet than usually, considering how I normally go about trying to find good, old-fashioned Dutch detective fiction. Let's find out how it panned out.

Maarten Roesink is a poor, struggling and unrecognized poet with an estranged girlfriend, piles of unpaid bills and an unfinished novel, but nothing to the detriment of his ego, sense of self-importance or that of his poetry – which he blamed on the public ("...a monstrosity of bad taste"). That helped to make him decide to accept the invitation from his aunt, Ina Roesink, to stay with her so he can work on his novel and poetry in peace. Since his landlady is pressing him for rent and his stepfather is talking about getting him a decent office job, Maarten decides to accept his aunt's invitation ("...she may be a cultural barbarian, but she has money..."). So packs a suitcase, borrows some money and travels to Aunt Ida's home, Villa Lucie, in the village of Drechteroord in Gelderland. When he arrives, something is not quite right.

Maarten is greeted by the newly hired housekeeper, Miss Mieke Kremer, who had neither been informed about him or the other guests ("...I seem to have ended up in a boarding house"). There are five other guests: Christiaan and Tine Henkelmans with their two children, twenty-year-old Hortense and eighteen-year-old Eddie. Mrs. Maud de Groot, elderly widow, who's Aunt Ina's oldest friend. Aunt Ina herself is nowhere to be found and no one knows where she or what happened to her. Maarten has to cycle down to the village to file a missing person's report, but is spending the next day bumming cigarettes, trying to borrow money and planning to return home. Only for Aunt Ina to turn up dead as a door nail. She's found inside a kitchen chest, hit over the head, before it was tightly nailed shut.

That brings the police to the villa, represented by Inspector Wietse Dijkstra, who's your typical, anchored to earth Dutch policeman which Visser punctuated by making Dijkstra a Frisian ("...his accent betrayed the Frisian, who speaks Dutch with difficulty"). What follows is largely a paint by numbers investigation revealing the victim was far from a sainted figure to her family and friends. Dijkstra more than once "would swear that all the guests entered into a conspiracy to murder Miss Roesink," because everyone has a motive, they're lying about something and nary an alibi to be found. However, I liked Dijkstra's quick, rapid fire Q&A with all seven suspects as opposed to the usual "dragging the Marsh." I also should mention that the stay at the villa and the death of his aunt starts an unexpected maturing process in the otherwise egocentric poet. Maarten today would have been accused of suffering from main character syndrome, but what if such person suddenly finds himself "not only an heir and witness, but also, and perhaps primarily, a suspect" in a sensational murder case? So slowly, but surely, a change comes over Maarten between the moment his aunt's body is discovered and Dijkstra hits upon the solution.

So we arrive at the most exciting, nerve-wrecking point in any Dutch vintage mystery: the solution. Is it going to hold itself together to deliver at least a fairly decent conclusion, underwhelm or completely fall apart? Good news, bad news. The good news is Visser, stylistically, remained consistent and a breeze to read, but ended bitterly disappointing. You can argue the only real crime happened towards the end, when Visser knifed his own story and let it bleed out over its last two chapters. I can only explain it by giving the solution (SPOILER/ROT13): Nhag Van jnagrq gb rzcgl bhg gur xvgpura purfg jura gur yvq qebccrq ba ure urnq, genccvat ure vafvqr frevbhfyl vawherq naq hapbafpvbhf. Fur unq nfxrq gur ivyyntr pnecragre, n qehax, gb pbzr bire naq anvy gur purfg fuhg, juvpu ur qvq jvgubhg ybbxvat vafvqr. Fb na nppvqrag gung ybbxrq yvxr zheqre ol hayvxryl pvephzfgnaprf. Invitation to Murder is basically one of those detective novels walking back its entire premise and the whole story itself into one big, blood-red herring. Something like that can absolutely be done, and successfully, but not it was executed here as it only leaves you with the feeling you just wasted your time – someone with Visser's credentials should have known better. Even more so thirty years later, when he inserted it into the 3 Classics from Dutch Crime Literature anthology.

I really wanted to like Invitation to Murder and silently rooted for Visser to carry the story and plot pass the finish line, but the end result is not the stuff of classics. Far from it. I would have been perfectly happy with a serviceable mystery. So my search for another Cor Docter or Ton Vervoort continues and hope you me on my next wandering through the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Dutch detective story.

Cracking Nuts: "The Murder of Santa Claus" (1952) by Tage la Cour

Tage la Cour's "Mordet pa julemanden" ("The Murder of Santa Claus," 1952), a parody-pastiche, originally appeared in a Danish crime anthology, Mord til jul (Murder for Christmas, 1952), before a translation was privately printed a year later and La Cour gifted a copy to Frederic Dannay – who's one half of the "Ellery Queen" partnership. Dannay was charmed enough by La Cour's "The Murder of Santa Claus" to have it published in the January, 1957, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

La Cour wrote "The Murder of Santa Claus" as a "sincere homage to the inimitable Agatha Christie" and EQMM presented to the story to their readers as "the cleverest parody of Hercule Poirot we have ever read." Let's find out.

"The Murder of Santa Claus" finds M. Hercules Poire and his biographer lazying around on Christmas Day with the radio softly playing Holy Night, Silent Night in the background. It appeared there would be no seasonal murders that Christmas "accompanied by the tunes of church and sleigh bells," until an urgent telegram arrives from Lady Gwendolyn: "AN ATROCIOUS MURDER COMMITTED TONIGHT AT DRUNKARD CASTLE. COME AT ONCE."

Lord Drunkard had been dressing himself up as Santa Claus in the library when he stabbed in the back with the obligatory, oriental-looking dagger and lived long enough to leave an unfinished, not very helpful dying message – reading "I'm being murdered today by—." Upon arrival at Drunkard Castle, Poire finds everyone with "exception of the corpse" gathered in the hall. I mean everyone. Every stock character is present from the son who had a bone to pick with his father and daughter in need of money to marry an Italian count to family from Australia and the police arrested a passing tramp. So finding the murderer should be easy enough for the Great Detective, but "no cases are quite that simple" when M. Poire as demonstrated by his solution.

Tage la Cour's "The Murder of Santa Claus" is best summed up as a short, but wonderful, piece of Grade-A nonsense in the spirit of Robert L. Fish's Schlock Homes series and Arthur Porges' Celery Green stories. A fun little story for the holiday. However, the best parody-pastiche of Hercule Poirot is still Amer Picon from Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936).

Notes for the curious: Somehow, I forgot to mention "The Murder of Santa Claus" appeared in that Danish anthology under the penname "Donald McGuire." From what I've been able to find online, Murder for Christmas is collection six short stories of which five are Danish translations of British authors. So my guess educated guess is that the editor, Tage la Cour, sneaked in his own, homegrown story under a foreign flag. I also forgot to mention that this story was translated into English by Poul Ib Liebe and the privately published edition came with illustrations from Lars Bo.

As if By Magic: Locked Room Mysteries and Other Miraculous Crimes (2025) edited by Martin Edwards

If you regularly check in on this blog, you probably noticed my all encompassing, all consuming addiction undying love for impossible crime fiction and it tends to dominate the blog, despite trying to keep everything varied and interesting – only to keep slipping into a brown study of locked room mysteries. After the galore of miracle murders from the previous three reviews, I elected to pick an anthology of short stories next that reflects the scope and richness of the traditional detective story. I picked Martin Edwards' latest anthology from the British Library Crime Classics series, As if By Magic: Locked Room Mysteries and Other Miraculous Crimes (2025). And, yes, I'm well aware it's an anthology of locked room and impossible crime short stories, but that's just a coincidence/unimportant detail/you being needlessly difficult. You can pick your excuse today!

As if By Magic is the second impossible crime-themed anthology Edwards has put together following Miraculous Mysteries: Locked Room Murders and Impossible Crimes (2017). So a followup was long overdue and knew this second anthology was coming, but tempered my expectations until I knew its content. I had some mixed results with locked room anthologies over year, which is partially my own fault.

I have been fishing in the pool of uncollected, rarely anthologized short impossible crime stories for years and even have an irregular blog-series "Locked and Loaded" (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) dedicated to them. So when an anthology appears, like David Stuart Davies' Classic Locked Room Mysteries (2016) or Otto Penzler's Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries (2022), the selection of stories can underwhelming with very little new to offer. Well, an early and promising review on In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel confirmed As if By Magic collected a host of obscure, rarely reprinted stories alongside a number of the usual suspects – like "THE FINEST SHORT STORY EVER WRITTEN!" (Carter Dickson's "The House in Goblin Wood," 1947). So immediately ordered a copy!

Martin Edwards' As if By Magic collects sixteen short stories of which the following eight have been read and reviewed on this blog before: L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace's "The Warder of the Door" (1898), James Ronald's "Too Many Motives" (1930), John Dickson Carr's "The Wrong Problem" (1936), Margery Allingham's "The Border-Line Case" (1937), Vincent Cornier's "The Shot That Waited" (1947), Carter Dickson's "The House in Goblin Wood" (reviewed with "The Wrong Problem"), Julian Symons' "As if By Magic" (1961) and Christianna Brand's "Murder Game" (1968). So, for the sake of brevity, I'll be skipping those seven stories and go over the remaining Eight. Eight out of sixteen for a modern locked room anthology is not a bad score for me. My only real complaint is that Edwards opted for "The Wrong Problem" and "The Shot That Waited" instead of Carr's "The Diamond Pentacle" (1939) and Cornier's "Dust of Lions" (1933). One day, one day...

So that makes the first story under examination E.C. Bentley's "The Ordinary Hairpins," originally published in the October, 1916, issue of the Strand Magazine, in which Philip Trent is commissioned to paint a portrait of Lord Aviemore. Trent had previously done a sketch of Lord Aviemore's late sister-in-law, Lillemor Wergeland, who disappeared from a ship following the death of her husband and son – written off as a suicide by drowning. Or was it murder? Trent becomes interested in the cold case and, over the course of months, slowly follows the trail to an obvious conclusion. Better written than plotted and a weak pick for an impossible crime anthology. Fortunately, the next one is a minor gem that has been on my wishlist for ages.

Will Scott's "The Vanishing House" was culled from a "highly-regarded," but out-of-print collection of short stories entitled Giglamps (1924). Douglas G. Greene, co-founder of Crippen & Landru, praised this "collection of short stories about a tramp who sometimes act as detective runs afoul of the law himself" – saying "I have seldom enjoyed a book more than Giglamps." This particular short story has been on my wishlist ever since coming across it in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). Where the impossibility is concerned, "The Vanishing House" didn't disappoint. A story that follows Giglamps on a very strange night when he goes to sleep in an old, abandoned barn and wakes up to find that someone has swapped his worn, dirty boots with brand new ones. Not wanting to stick around, Giglamps flees the barn and stumbles through the dark, until spotting a lighted window several hours later. However, Giglamps overhears a conversation, "if yer catch anythin' listenin', shoot it," convincing him to trod on, but has to return to the house when someone is killed on its doorstep. So goes off to fetch a policeman.

When he returns to the house with a village constable in tow, the scene appears to have impossibly altered. There's no body in front of the house, but a body is found half a mile away. So it appears someone moved the body between Giglamps witnessing the murder and returning with the police, but the victim is still clutching a clump of grass ("...if they move him it tears away"). That suggests the house that stood there was either miraculously vanished or moved without leaving traces ("cottages can't walk, my lad—not in these parts"). The solution not only makes "The Vanishing House" a gem of the 1920s impossible crime story, but for me a highlight of this anthology. I hope Martin Edwards is pestering the British Library to get Giglamps reprinted.

Anthony Wynne's "The Gold of Tso-Fu," originally published in the February, 1926, issue of Flynn's Magazine, begins with nerve specialist and amateur detective Dr. Eustace Hailey dropping by at the China Bank offices of Sir Thomas Evans – who had asked him to come to discuss an urgent matter. Barely arrived, Dr. Hailey is informed something terrible has happened and is brought to ornately-decorated, almost surrealistic room in the bank building dominated by "a huge effigy in freshly gilded wood" of "some oriental deity seated on his throne." Underneath the throne was the body of Mr. Harrier, one of the bank directors, who had been stabbed to death. However, the door of the room had been under constant observation from the time Harrier had entered the room to the moment the murder was discovered. Nobody was seen going, or coming out, during that time. Even stranger, Sir Thomas begins to act unhinged from admitting to having committed the murder and challenging Dr. Hailey ("I have set you a puzzle to solve") to drawing a gun. So a very promising and puzzling opening, but Wynne's unable to sustain this is in the second-half of the story as the plot succumbs to its pulp trappings with a very gimmicky, time-worn locked room-trick and solution. That while there's a much better, much more elegant possibility staring you in the face. Not one of Wynne's finest locked room mysteries.

Hal Pink's "The Two Flaws," a six-page short short, was syndicated in numerous newspapers in 1934 and has Inspector Wenshall explaining to Superintendent Carson how the murder of Clive Burgess is a simple, open-and-shut case – everything points to Marriott, victim's business, as the culprit. Burgess was found seated behind his desk of his locked office with key lying on the table with the other two keys belonging to Marriott and the landlord ("...he is in Germany"). Burgess also left an unfinished dying message on the writing pad reading "M-A-R" ("what more do you want?"). Superintendent Carson, along with the reader, spots the locked room-trick that was evidently employed and exposes the two fatal flaws to ensnare the murderer. So not the most original locked room mystery, but competent and good enough for a short short. I found it interesting that the locked room scenario was used to frame an innocent man without locking him inside the office with the victim.

Ernest Dudley's "The Case of the Man Who Was Too Clever," first published in Meet Dr. Morelle (1943) and reprinted in Dr. Morelle Elucidates (2010), brings Dr. Morelle and his secretary, Miss Frayle, to a block of flats to visit a friend, but screams coming from the next door flap draws him into a murder case. They find a Mr. Collins banging on the locked door of his bathroom, calling to his wife, but she doesn't answer and so they break down the door. What they find is Diana Collins dead from an overdose of laudanum. Dr. Morelle looks straight through the suicide setup and makes short work of Collins. Even though the explanation of how Collins worked the locked bathroom setup is dull and unimaginative, it could have been tremendously improved with an honest story title. Something like "The Case of the Man Who Was Really Stupid" or "The Case of the Dumb Murderer," because Collins really wanted that meet and greet with Albert Pierrepoint.

Grenville Robbins' "The Broadcast Body," originally published in the June, 1936, issue of The 20-Story Magazine, should have been the standout of this anthology. The premise is fantastic in every sense of the word! Professor John Manfred invites his nephew to attend a private experiment with a revolutionary invention that's going to change the world forever, the Body Broadcaster. Professor Manfred is going to broadcast his bodily self from his laboratory at Hampstead to his brother's laboratory at Dulwich. A machine that can "actually broadcast solid bodies through the ether" and "goods can be broadcast as easily as men and women." An epoch-making, history altering invention, but, of course, something goes wrong during the test run. The professor climbs inside a sealed box, crammed with machinery, gadgets and a transmitter, which is followed by an explosion and the professor has disappeared – an explosion happened simultaneously at the laboratory at Dulwich. Only without him emerging before his brother as intended. So was he now "wandering in a disembodied state in some curious fourth dimension" or is there a natural, much more mundane explanation? In this case, the answer, unfortunately, is yes. The solution is simply dropped into the nephew's lap and how the professor escaped from the room just feels like a cheat. A real pity as the setup is fantastic, but liked the historical snippet mentioning television.

Funnily enough, "The Broadcast Body" was published in the same year as E.R. Punshon's The Bath Mysteries (1936) that also mentions and shows an early and experimental television set.

Michael Gilbert's "The Coulman Handicap," originally appearing in the April, 1958, issue of Argosy, takes a procedural approach to the problem poses by a seemingly impossible, inexplicable vanishing act. Detective Sergeant Petrella is part of a twenty-four men team observing, tailing and hopefully trapping a notoriously slippery go-between thieves and fences, Mrs. Coulman. And keeps a cut as a service fee ("just like a literary agent"). Petrella is close on her heels when she slips inside a bar with only entrance/exit and disappears into thin air. Gilbert gave me a little hope by apparently eliminating the obvious, disappointing type of explanation for these kind of vanishing acts, only to reveal it's just a variation on that type of solution. Other than the uninspiring ending, the opening was very good and liked the idea of an impossible disappearance disrupting, what should have been, a routine police operation.

This anthology ends, for me, on a high note with the next story. Geoffrey Bush, son of Christopher Bush, was a composer, musical scholar and a member of the Carr Society who famously gave Edmund Crispin the idea for the most famous of all short shorts, "Who Killed Baker?" (1950). "The Last Meeting of the Butlers Club," published in the March, 1980, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is Bush's hilarious take on the glorious of the detective story of yesteryear and "the wave of weekend country-house murders that swept over England in the '20s and '30s." What is to become the last meeting of the Butlers Club is attended by a handful of the last, aging members of ex-butlers who pooled their modest inheritances from their generous employers to get a taste of the good life. So they begin to reminiscence about the good, old days and the times they were nearly arrested for murdering their generous employers. But every time the policeman wanted to put on the handcuffs, a gifted amateur detective appeared scoffing at the idea that the butler did it. Whether it was Dr. John Thorndyke and Philo Vance to Lord Peter Wimsey and Father Brown, they always appeared to bail out the butler with a ludicrous solutions. A marvelous piece of genre parody that can be compared to other locked room satires like Morton Wolson's "The Glass Room" (1957), John Sladek's "The Locked Room" (1972) and, of course, Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936).

So, as always, As if By Magic is a mixed bag of tricks with Scott's "The Vanishing House" and Bush's "The Last Meeting of the Butlers Club" being my personal favorites and liked Pink's "The Two Flows," as a competent obscurity, but found the remaining short stories lacking – especially when it comes to the locked rooms/impossible crimes. That's where this anthology, as an anthology of locked room mysteries and impossible crimes, comes up short. However, I only read half of the stories and skipped some of the better picks by Allingham, Brand, Carr and Cornier which would have balanced out the overall quality of the selection. And maybe I'm demanding of these types of locked room anthologies, because (ROT13) qvfthvfrf, fgrccvat bhg (gevpx) jvaqbjf naq xavsr-fcvggvat fgnghrf isn't doing it for me. Well, that should teach me not to write the introduction before finishing the book.

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024) by Benjamin Stevenson

Benjamin Stevenson, an Australian stand-up comedian and mystery author, delivered two highlights of the current Golden Age revival, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023), but had to wait with third Ernest Cunningham novel on account of it being a "Christmas Special" – springtime was too early (or too late) to read/review a Christmas mystery. I was tempted to put up a review of Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024) during the summer, but decided to wait until the days started to shorten.

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is also a bit shorter in length than the previous two novels. Practically a novella padded with decorated pages and others as white as every Christmas Day should be, but fair's fair, it makes the hardcover edition a very wraptable present to give over the holidays. More importantly, it's as good as the first two despite being much smaller in scope and introduced a completely new, seasonally-themed gimmick. There are twenty-four chapters and twenty-three end with an illustration of a small, opened door or window revealing the clue from that chapter. So like an advent calendar of clues!

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret begins a week before Christmas and Ernest is busy with Juliette planning their wedding when Ernest receives a plea for help from his ex-wife, Erin, who's been arrested on suspicion of murdering her new partner, Lyle Pearse – an ex-Hollywood actor turned philanthropist. Erin had woken up that morning to discover she was covered in blood, a bloody knife at the top of the stairs and Pearse lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A dying message, "CHRISTMAS," scrawled on the floor with a bloody finger. So, having solved two murder sprees, Ernest travels to Katoomba to try prove Erin's innocence, but that's not as easy as she "stuck with the worst version of the story." That version involves first, of two, impossible situations Ernest encounters on his third case. Erin listens to white noise to fall asleep, "Tokyo Railway in the Rain," but she remains a very light sleeper. So, if the murder was a frame job, how could the murderer have dumped blood on Erin without waking her up? Admittedly, the impossibility is not as self apparent as described, kept wondering why Ernest called it an impossible murder, but the ending made it very apparent it can be counted as an impossible crime. And not a bad one, either! Just not as clearly stated as it could have been, however, the best is yet to come.

Lyle Pearse's abandoned his acting career and returned to Australia following the death of his brother, overdosed on bad drugs, which drove him to create a foundation to help ex-addicts get back on their feet – creating "long-lasting reform" by igniting passion. So many of the foundation's graduates of the program ended up working in theaters build by the foundation like The Pearse Theater in Katoomba. Every year, they have a tour with all of their success stories ending with a black-tie Christmas finale in Katoomba.

This year, the tour finale, now memorial, is headlined by the victim's friend and stage magician, Rylan Blaze. The big illusion of the night is a combination of the guillotine and bullet-catch trick. But by that time, Ernest has picked up enough bits and pieces of what could be clues that he believes the wax bullet had been swapped for a real bullet. And rushes the stage causing absolute pandemonium. Blaze is effectively trapped inside the guillotine, because the gun with presumably a live round has a laser trigger activated by movement. When the timer hits zero and the blade drops, Blaze's head rolled over the stage! Something that should be impossible, because the dangerous looking blade is nothing more than "flimsy paper." Ernest has his work cutout with two murders, two impossible crimes, a bloody dying messages, stockings worth of clues and a cast of suspects comprising of the magician's assistant, a stagehand, a hypnotist, twins and even a dead guy.

Now this probably doesn't sound a whole lot smaller in scope, or shorter, than the previous two novels, but it really is about the half shorter. Stevenson simply spun a great deal of complexity out of an ultimately simple case with skill and humor. Not just depending on the two impossible situation to give weight and bulk to the plot.

Firstly, there are the everyone and secrets from the book title. A festive, tinseled web of secrets complicating everything and beautifully making use of Christmas traditions, old and new. Secondly, gimmicky as it sounds, the advent calendar guarantees a richly-clued, fair play detective story with the clues forming, as John Dickson Carr described it, a pattern of evidence that, when put together, reveals the whole design – which is the hallmark of great detective fiction. So the advent calendar gimmick made the clueing even better. Not to mention Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret fulfills its obligation to actually do something with the story's holiday theme and found a way to use some Christmas traditions, old and new, to tell a detective story. And, yes, the solution to the impossible decapitation on stage is grand. Not terribly complicated or disappointingly simple and fairly original when it comes to inexplicable beheadings topped off with a memorable denouement when Ernest begins to eliminate his suspects, until the murderer remains. Where and how it happens is what makes it memorable. That poor guy is starting to look like a battered warhorse!

So as a modern, retro-GAD detective novel, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is a treat for the holidays with nothing to complain or nitpick about. Beside the story and an excellent plot, the main attraction of the series remains Ernest Cunningham as the narrator ("reliable narrator here"). Well, that and the return to the plotting standards of the Golden Age, but have taken a real liking to Ernest's narrative style. Like giving spoilers of what's ahead in the story, but his spoilers have all the quality of a wish granted by a monkey's paw. There's always a catch or twist. So to say I enjoyed Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret would be an understatement and had I read it last year, it would have easily made "The Naughty List: Top 12 Favorite Christmas Mystery Novels & Short Stories." If reading Christmas mysteries is one of your December traditions, Stevenson's Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret is as good as they come. I very much look forward to Everyone in This Bank is a Thief (2026).

Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

P.J. Fitzsimmons' Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022) is the fifth, of currently nine, novels starring Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly, idler and sleuth, who accepts an invitation from his mother to join her on the Côte d'Azur – where he intends to have an awkward confrontation ("...did you arrange to pop off Papa?"). Anty travels to the Riviera Royale, "an ornate, Victorian-era hotel and casino," on the island of Cap Royale. When he arrives, Anty learns from his mother a violent death has taken and the killer is scheduled to be executed.

The victim is a clown, Malandrino the Magnificent, who was touring the Riviera by steam yacht as part of Deebee Digby's Cirque d'Azur. What remained of Malandrino, dressed in a mouse custom, was found in the cage of the circus elephant, Thumpy, where the animal had stepped on him ("repeatedly, by all evidence"). Deebee intends to recuperate the financial loss suffered from losing his center ringer by executing Thumpy in "the most spectacular fashion possible" and "sell tickets to the event." Previous novels shown Anty to be a friend to the animals, striking up a friendship with a cemetery crow in The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022), who's naturally appalled at the prospect ("has this elephant received due process under French law?"). Anty is determined to proof Thumpy's innocence and prevent Deedee from being publicly executing him.

Good on him, however, have to admit the following exchange between Anty and Deedee made me laugh when Deedee tells Anty electrocution is going to be the method of execution.

 

Anty: "you can't electrocute Thumpy."

Deedee: "I wouldn't have thought so either, but the manufacturer stands by his generator. I have a written guarantee."

 

Fortunately, true to his intrepid nature as a sleuth hound, Anty uncovers clues and evidence Malandrino was "murdered by human hand" with more than enough motives to go around – not only for torturing animals. Malandrino is one of those characters whom Scott, a regular in the comments, would probably nominate for the Hall of Shame of "murderable victims" who had it coming. Just one problem: everyone with a motive also have a collective alibi. Everyone was on a yacht out on sea enjoying a seafood barbecue and fireworks ("alibis all round"). They're the bunch of strange, eccentric characters you'd expect from a detective story with a circus background. You have Malandrino's replacement act, Norton Bean, who's better known as "Beano, The Astounding Bounding Bean." A bigger hack reviewer than yours truly, Max Minefield, who considers himself to be the circus critic. Bidelia Mimpley and Myrtle Biddicomb, known as the biddies, are two spinsters and circus fans ("camp followers") who never miss a show. Anty even meets two obscure relatives, Aunt Jacqueline Quillfeather and her daughter Chadwick. So even without a second body turning up and cheating going on in the hotel casino, Anty can't get around to having that sit down with his mother

This series is billed as a series of locked room mystery novels and Fitzsimmons comments in the afterword that Reckoning at the Riviera Royale has "one of the more original impossible murders that Anty has had to untangle." I agree that the solution to the murder of Malandrino is not only original, but ingenious, daring and absolutely hilarious – which perhaps not everyone's going to buy. Something straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, almost too preposterous to even take as a joke, had it not been for Fitzsimmons trying to make it sound plausible. Not an easy task when your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek. How the trick is made to look somewhat credible does have a touch of John Dickson Carr (phffrqarff bs nyy guvatf trareny). That being said, it's not an impossible crime or anywhere near something resembling a locked room mystery. It's a howdunit, an absolute bonkers howdunit, in which alibis have to be broken down instead of locked doors. So, plot-wise, more like Christopher Bush than Carr. Well, if Bush had been a longtime resident of a mental asylum.

That's just one murder. Anty still has to deal with a second murder, the shenanigans of his newfound relatives and find a minute to have that talk with his mother about his father's untimely passing. This is done with the customary light, humorous tone and witticism from previous novels, but Reckoning at the Riviera Royale has a plot that comes closer to matching the best in the series, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021). The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020), The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) and the already mentioned The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse all had the series trademark humor and genre spoofing, but their solutions lacked the imagination that made The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning such a promising introduction to the series. Not a criticism that can be leveled against Reckoning at the Riviera Royale. So, if you want a mystery with some color and imagination flashing out of its plot, Fitszimmons and Reckoning at the Riviera Royale have you covered!

I loved it enough to The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) up the pile, but first need to get around to a few other recently published locked room mysteries like J.L. Blackhurst's Smoke and Murders (2024) and Tom Mead's recently published The House at Devil's Neck (2025).

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

Last time, I looked at P.J. Fitzsimmons' The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020), first in the Anthony "Anty" Boisjoly series, which just like The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) and The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) proved to be another entertaining send-up of the Golden Age detective story – recalling Leo Bruce, Edmund Crispin and P.G. Wodehouse. And better plotted than you would expect from a series labeled "locked room cosies." But the devil is always in the details. The execution of the plot, as a whole, left me in two minds. So decided to immediately move on to the fourth title in the series to see how much priority I should give to Reckoning at the Riviera Royale (2022), The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich (2023) and Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling (2023).

Like previously said, Fitzsimmons is not a writer to be caught in the act of being boring and The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse (2022) is no exception. It reads like a send-up of Paul Halter's Le diable de Dartmoor (The Demon of Dartmoor, 1993) and L'homme qui aimait les nuages (The Man Who Loved Clouds, 1999).

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse takes place in 1929 and, similar to the first novel, starts with a telegram delivered to the Juniper Gentleman's Club. A telegram with an ominous warning, "THE CURSE IS ONCE AGAIN UPON THE CARNABY FAMILY-(STOP)-DO NOT RETURN TO HOY-(STOP)-ONLY DEATH AWAITS YOU," addressed to W. Carnaby of the Juniper Club. However, Carnaby is not a member of the club, but "London's finest club steward" who has failed to return from his holiday. Anty decides to launch a rescue campaign and travels with Vickers to the village of Hoy in the Peak District to have at least one question answered, "how is it that Carnaby the club steward's ancestral home is, apparently, a castle?"

Hoy is an ancient place populated with Carnabys, two distinct family lines, divided in two groups, Castle Carnabys and Town Carnabys, of which the first is comprised of the direct descendants of Ranulf Carnaby – whom own Carnaby Castle and surrounding land. However, they only have use of the castle with the eldest descendant holding executive powers "limited to maintenance, upkeep and persecuting witches." That persecuting-of-witches thing saddled the Castle Carnabys with a curse for the past four hundred years targeting the young brides who might bring the Castle Carnabys its next heir. A curse that had been suspended by employing a local witch to counter the curse. Cecil Carnaby, "castle despot," recently returned home with his Italian bride, Ludovica. Cecil is determined to shake things up at the castle and showed his resident witch the door.

Some time later, Ludovica is seen walking on the promontory above Hoy Scarp when "the mists rose from the river, raised her in the air, and flung her into the gorge." Six people witnessed it happen and swear no one was near Ludovica when "the mists carried her right over Hoy Scarp" ("...like the curse used to do in the old days..."). Anty learns of this impossible murder from Inspector Ivor Wittersham, of Scotland Yard, who bump into each other on the train en route to Hoy and Carnaby Castle, but, of course, it's not the only complication facing them. First of all, there's the intricate, crossed family relationships of the Carnabys twisted and intertwined through every aspect of the case. Secondly, Ludovica is a widow with a dead and a missing husband, which is why the other Carnabys considered her a mere gold digger. But her former stepson turned up believing she disappeared his father. And, before the mist carried her away, another member of the family had several near fatal accidents ("you'd almost think that the castle or someone in it was trying to kill her"). Not to mention a string of thefts from locked bedrooms and uncovering a rabbit warren of secreted doors, hidden passageways and underground catacombs.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse is as entertaining and breezy a read as the previous three of Anty's outings, but the plot is regrettably thin and feels less fair. I spotted the murderer early on and tried to be too complicated in trying to find an explanation for Ludovica's impossible murder, which turned out to be something of a letdown. I honestly would have been happy if the solution turned out to be that Ludovica was hit in the back by a crossbow bolt with a rounded, padded tip – making it appear as if she was lifted and flung over the edge. The solution for the thefts from the locked bedrooms practically suggested itself, but perfectly serviceable for a minor subplot. Fortunately, there's a third impossibility somewhat redeeming the book as a locked room mystery. A second murder behind a locked door, what else, but inside is a normally hidden, now open doorway leading to several rooms in the castle. All occupied during the murder and nobody was seen creeping out of one of these hidden doorways! If this impossible murder had a slightly more ambitious locked room-trick, I would likely have placed the book alongside The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning on its strength alone.

You can chalk part of my disappoint up to having come across more than one locked room mystery this year toying and playfully subverting secret passages. Normally a big no-no for both the traditional detective story and me personally. So when the scene presented itself, I hoped the book would (plot-wise) pull itself together and deliver a noteworthy impossible crime during the final stretch.

So, once again, Anty sleuthing shenanigans leaves me in two minds. The humorous characters, storytelling and generally having a run of the place remain the series' strong points. And the primary reason to pick up this series. A highlight of The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse is Anty forging an endearing friendship with a cemetery crow he christens Buns. Even having a few small adventures together along the way ("poor weather for aviation, Buns old man"). But the plots remain uneven and some good ideas undeveloped. Such as the second impossible murder here with its open secret passage or the first locked room murder from the first novel. This time, the who and why all felt a bit muddled and, on a whole, decidedly less fair.

The Case of the Carnaby Castle Curse regrettably stands as the weakest in the series, so far, but think I'll stick with the series for at least two, three more novels. I simply enjoy Anty, Vickers and the humor too much to dump this soon, however, I do hope at least one of them has a plot that can measure up to the second novel. First, I'll return to a few other contemporary locked room specialists. I still have Gigi Pandian's The Raven Thief (2024) and J.L. Blackhurst's Smoke and Murders (2024) on the big pile with the new James Scott Byrnside and Tom Mead looming on the horizon. Next up is a return to the Golden Age!

The Seven Razors of Ockam (1997) by Roger Ormerod

The Seven Razors of Ockam (1997) is a standalone mystery published at the tail-end of Roger Ormerod's quarter-of-a-century run as a writer of varied, original and sadly overlooked crime and detective fiction – retiring after two more novels in 1999. Ormerod greatest contribution to the genre is finding a way to successfully integrate the fairly clued, Golden Age puzzle plots with the post-WWII psychological thrillers, crime novels and the then emerging police procedural. They're not merely traditional detective novels with modern trappings. A variety of personalized tropes makes them distinctly Ormerodian detective novels.

Ormerod's third-to-last novel lost none of the vitality of his work from the 1970s, '80s and early '90s. On the contrary! The Seven Razors of Ockam is one of his most striking and entertaining mysteries to date, but notably different in tone from what came before. Ormerod probably knew his writing career was drawing to a close and decided to have some fun with this one. Ditching the tone and trappings of the crime novel to tell a bonkers, pulp-style mystery thriller that could have been plucked from the pages of James Ronald or Gerald Verner yarn.

The backdrop, really the main "character," of The Seven Razors of Ockam is the fictitious steel manufacturing town of Ockam. Not to be confused with the other Ockam in Surrey. The town, famous for its Ockam Steel, has a long history of steel and arms manufacturing dating back to ancient times, when rival barons would travel to Ockam to have their troops equipped with Ockam weaponry – only "to meet later in order to slaughter each other in distant parts." So "nobody attacked Ockam" and the place developed an independent spirit and populations with "the mercurial sense of fairness and decency that arose from several hundred years of carefully balanced neutrality." That sense of fairness is what helped kick everything off.

Bert "Slasher" Harris, the incumbent mayor of Ockam, is asked to draw the prizes for a raffle held to get the hospital a new dialysis machine. The prize closet is well-stocked with the two top prizes being a Ford Escort and a BMW motorcycle, but also include a typewriter, a Sony Walkman and a new kitchen layout. So an easy enough, routine gig for a mayor, however, Slasher Harris decides to call the winners in reverse order. The first two names drawn think they have won the first and second prize, instead of the sixth and seventh consolation prizes. Pretty soon, the confusion turned into a riot as the crowd was ready to tear their mayor to pieces, wrecking the old Town Hall and burned down the Slasher Harris Stand at Cutters' football field. Graffiti began to appear all over town, mocking the mayor and threatening the prize winners, but of more concern is the theft of one of the town's treasures. A case with a set of seven classic open razors each engraved with a day of the week.

Nearly a month later, on a Monday, the first prize winner is attacked in a parking lot by someone wearing a ski-mask and wielding an open razor. A razor that had Monday engraved on it. However, the assailant is unsuccessful, but Tuesday's victim is not so fortunate ("the attack was savage, sir"). Detective Inspector Tomkins is tasked with putting a stop to this razor wielding maniac apparently slashing through the prizewinners of the raffle.

Like I said, The Seven Razors of Ockam is redolent of the pulp mysteries of yesteryear with killer menacing and thinning out a group of people, but the comparisons only go as far as the setup. After the second attack, Ormerod simply refuses to follow the obvious plot patterns expected from such a pulp-style mystery and goes off-script. So, going into the second-half, the story enters a calm before the storm resumes phase, which admittedly slackens the pace a little. There's not much to tell or describe about this part of the book, except for a curious little anecdote told by the town clerk to the mayor that would have made for an interesting (historical) subplot. In the 1950s, the town had another "one of those crazy murderers on the loose," but "one used a shotgun, though, and he couldn't aim straight to save his life" – targeting the sons of the members of a secretive club. An anecdote that comes with the hushed up solution, however, the motive is quite novel. Just imagine what a writer like Paul Halter would have done with such a story? I think a historically retelling of the 1950s serial killing case intertwined with the present day case would have shored up the whole novel and given the whole story that Ormerodian as shotgun killings was one of his personalized tropes. Something that's notably missing from The Seven Razors of Ockam.

So how does The Seven Razors of Ockam stack up? Ormerod obviously wanted to have fun with this one and therefore lacks the usual plot machinations and complexities of the previous novels. No perfect alibis (Time to Kill, 1974), galore of false solutions (More Dead Than Alive, 1980), locked room slayings (When the Old Man Died, 1991) or delivering a rug-puller of an ending (Face Value, 1983). For example, the murderer becomes more, and more, evident as the story progresses. Even without the wonderful, somewhat surrealistic clue of the tissue paper. While less complicated, densely-plotted than previous novels, Ormerod makes that up by delivering one of his most readable and striking novels. And more humorous in tone than when presenting his detective fiction as serious crime novels or police procedurals. Particular the opening chapters detailing the run-up to the raffle, its immediately aftermath and the Ockamites helped to make The Seven Razors of Ockam a fun, '90s rendition of the pulp-style mystery thrillers from the '30s and '40s.

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) by Benjamin Stevenson

I recently read Benjamin Stevenson's genre debut, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022), which perfectly blended the contemporary, character-driven crime novel with the plot complexity and fair play principles of the Golden Age detective story – starring crime fiction expert Ernest Cunningham. A reliable narrator, if there ever was one! This time, the promise to "modernize" the great detective stories of yesteryear without brutally butchering them was fully delivered on to the point where the book read like a modern continuation of the Golden Age traditions. So far from the usual pale, unfunny and cliche-ridden imitations of the Agatha Christie-style country house mysteries of the past. But neither is it a cutesy, sugary sweet cozy, or cozy adjacent, mystery as the book title and cover might suggest. It's as much a modern crime novel as it's a classically-styled detective story. I was incredibly pleased.

I was so pleased with Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone, I ordered, received and read Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) post-haste. And it's even better than the first one!

Ernest Cunningham is back from his disastrous, deadly family reunion at the Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat and has gone on to write a modestly successful book about his experience, but the experience left him with the lingering symptoms of survivor's guilt and impostor syndrome. He also signed a lucrative publishing contract to write a second, fictional book and took a large advance, but Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone was a firsthand account of his personal experiences – not complete fiction. Just a little. So without inspiration, Ernest accepts an invitation from the Australian Mystery Writers' Society to attend a crime writing festival aboard the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, the Ghan. A four day tour cutting through the Australian desert with panels, Q&As and sight seeing stops.

The guest of honor and "major drawcard" is the international bestselling author of the Detective Morbund series, Henry McTavish, who's famous creation "is as close to a modern-day Holmes or Poirot as they come" with a dedicated fandom – calling themselves "Morbund's Mongrels." Scottish phenomenon is not the only writer on the card. Alan Royce is a forensic mystery writer who has written eleven books in the Dr. Jane Black series, SF Majors writes psychological thrillers, Jane Fulton wrote a widely acclaimed legal thriller twenty years ago and has been working on the sequel ever since. Wolfgang is a representative of the Australian literary crowd, "shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize," who's only link to the crime genre is "his rhyming verse novel retelling of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood." He reminded me of the characters populating Arthur W. Upfield's An Author Bites the Dust (1948) and enjoyed his confrontation with Ernest during the first panel ("...all you did was copy Capote"). Ernest represents both the debuting and non-fiction categories, because his book is a true-crime memoir, but he brought along his girlfriend Juliette Henderson. The former owner of the Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat who had also written a book about the murders that took place there ("her book had sold better than mine"). Naturally, there are some ill-feelings, bruised egos and buried secrets to be shared among the authors eventually leading to a dramatic murder.

Sounds conventional enough, so far, but Ernest takes a hands-on approach to the job of a reliable narrator with a lot of foreshadowing, fourth wall breaking and a bit of teasing. That's why Ernest is "a bit chattier than your usual detective" to ensure no "obvious truths" are concealed from the reader. For example, Ernest tells the reader that he uses the killer's name ("in all its forms") 106 times and gives a tally throughout the story of the name count. And, of course, it not even remotely close to being that easy to find the well-hidden murderer! Stevenson clearly understands that the ability to gracefully lie through your teeth without saying an untrue word is an invaluable tool when it comes to writing and plotting detective stories. It not only makes for an incredibly fun, fairly clued meta-whodunit with a bit of comedy and self-parody, but an engaging cat-and-mouse between armchair detective/reader and narrator. I appreciated the early heads up ("if you're hoping for a locked-room mystery, this isn't it").

 

 

Just like the first book, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect might still strike some as somewhat cozy adjacent, when summarily described, but another thing this series does very well is striking a balance between the classical and modern schools of the genre – which include a few sordid elements you would never come across in a Golden Age mystery. However, it's not merely the more sordid criminal elements making this series a perfect blend of the traditional and modern style, but how the world of today is incorporated into this whodunit. Particularly the plot-thread concerning (SPOILER/ROT13) Jbystnat'f vagrenpgvir neg cebwrpg Gur Qrngu bs Yvgrengher naq ubj vg'f yvaxrq gb nabgure cybg-guernq to reveal something that could only happen in today's world.

I noted in the past how the argument that advancements in technology and forensic science during the second-half of the previous century made the traditional detective story, popular during its first-half, obsolete was demolished by Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54) decades before it was put forward. It simply depends on who's doing the writing and plotting. Stevenson's Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect are exactly what I imagined the Grandest Game in the World could have evolved into had it been allowed to co-exist alongside the post-WWII psychological thrillers, crime novels and police procedurals. So was even more pleased than with the first book in the series and only the potential of spoilers prevents me from raving rambling on about this richly-plotted gem of a retro-Golden Age mystery, but you probably get the idea by now.

So I don't know what's more appropriate to close out this shoddy review, we're so back or nature is healing? Either way, I'm slightly pissed the third in the series is titled Everyone this Christmas has a Secret (2024) and we're not even halfway through April! I guess Christmas is coming early this year as that one is going to be cleared off the list long before December rolls around.