The Frankenstein Factory (1975) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch was the King of Short Stories, the Man of a Thousand Tales of Mystery and Detection, but, during his five decade run, Hoch also wrote a handful of novel-length mysteries like The Shattered Raven (1969), The Blue Movie Murders (1973) and a three-novel series of science-fiction hybrid mysteries – generally known as the "Computer Cops" series. You read that right. They're the back tracing Cyber Police you were warned about!

Carl Crader and Earl Jazine work for the Computer Investigation Bureau, headquartered at the World Trade Center in New York, whose "investigations sometimes spill over into what might generally be called crimes of the new technology" in the 21st century. So the C.I.B. are the "experts on computers, lasers, holograms, cryosurgery" and "new technology" handling "crimes the regular police forces aren't equipped for." Crader is the head of the C.I.B. ("...reports directly to the President") and Jazine is his field agent. They appeared in only three novels, The Transvection Machine (1971), The Fellowship of the Hand (1973) and The Frankenstein Factory (1975).

This time, I've a good excuse/reason (take your pick) to unchronologically start at the end of the series. The Frankenstein Factory had been recommended several times over the years for its qualities as both a science-fiction mystery and clever pastiche of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). That and the first two novels appear to be more science-fiction thrillers than science-fiction mysteries. The Frankenstein Factory seemed the safest choice and perhaps a candidate for that future followup to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Hybrid Mysteries."

First of all, I skipped the first two novels making it a bit confusing when, exactly, The Frankenstein Factory is supposed to take place. The first chapter refers to "these early years of the twenty-first century," but, early on in the story, there were several hints the story could take place during the 2010s or even early 2020s – based on a reference to the fading memories of "the renewed moon flights of the late 1990s." And the age of one of the characters who took part in one of those return missions. But it became a lot clearer during the second-half and home stretch that it takes place roughly twenty-five years after the mid-to late 1970s. So probably somewhere around 2004, give or take a year. It could also be a bit later based on a references to that "seventy-year-old mystery novel by the British writer Agatha Christie," but that would still place the story within the 2000s. Now with that out of the way, let's take a look at the story.

The Frankenstein Factory begins with Earl Jazine traveling by hovercraft to Horseshoe Island, somewhere off the coast of Baja California, under the guise of medical photographer. Jazine has come to the island to film and document an experimental operation.

Dr. Lawrence Hobbes is the head of International Cryogenics Institute who freeze and store people's bodies "against a future time when they could be revived," but this goes hand-in-hand with their research into operating techniques at low temperatures. So underneath the research facility is also a cold storage vault with frozen bodies inside sealed cylinders. Dr. Hobbes is ready to take the next step and revive a young man who died of a brain tumor in the 1970s, but the tumor did a lot of damage to the body and other organs. So needs several organ transplants, brain included, before they can reanimate him. Dr. Hobbes assembled a crack medical team to carry out this secret and experimental operation. Dr. Freddy O'Connor, a brain surgeon, who had great success with brain transplants in animals. Dr. Eric MacKenzie, "only military surgeon to set foot on the moon thus far," and Philip Whalen assist him. This team is rounded out by Tony Cooper, a bone specialist, and Vera Morgan, a research chemist, who only arrived the day before Jazine. There are two more people on the island, the elderly Miss Emily Watson whose money has made the whole operation possible and a maid/cook, Hilda. And, well, there's the patient, or "shell body," who they call Frank.

The operation is a success, "we have heartbeat and pulse," but, while Frank is sleeping and recovering in the operating room, things begin to happen on the island. Miss Watson goes missing from her bedroom, leaving only a smear of blood behind, but she, or her body, is not found following a thorough search of the buildings and island – she had vanished from the island. However, this is not an impossible disappearance as has been suggested elsewhere. Miss Watson simply disappeared, but not impossibly, as the murderer could have thrown her body into the sea or buried it somewhere. That's not the solution to the disappearance, but it's not an impossible crime. Just a somewhat baffling disappearance, considering the circumstances and apparent lack of motive. But then the murder strikes a second time!

This time, they find the body and the killer stops trying to hide future victims. Even worse, the group finds they have been cut off from the mainland and marooned on the island until new supplies arrive by hovercraft. Jazine takes charge until then, but body count continues to rise as survivors, suspects and supplies dwindle. All the while, the rapidly dwindling survivors become suspicious and frightened of Frank apparently still sleeping in the operating room ("Hell, I'd much rather believe that Frank down there did it than consider the possibility that I'm sitting at a table with a murderer"). So did they create a modern-day Frankenstein's monster or is there a human hand behind it all?

Before getting to the plot, the science-fiction elements deserve a mention. It goes without saying Hoch's depiction of the early 2000s in 1975 is very different from what actually happened. For one, the World Trade Center is still standing, but the most obvious difference is absence of the internet and cell phones despite characters remarking how "everything's miniaturized these days" and "almost everything's done by machine." Jazine explains late in the story the C.I.B. tackles mostly "computer frauds" such as "stock-market rigging, insurance swindles, even some gimmicking of the race-track computers," but no crimes related to, what could be called, an internet – which does not detract from the novel at all. Just interesting to compare Hoch's vision of the early 2000s to what actually happened. Hoch's version of the early 2000s appears to be a lot calmer than our early 2000s, but hints through out the story makes it clear the world outside the green, sunny island has some dystopian characteristics. Some countries promote suicide among the elderly, while other countries want to ship their criminals and surplus population to colonies on Venus ("...Venus colony is still a good many years away"). Somehow, someway, they took laser guns away from Americans shortly after their introduction in the mid '90s and cities are covered in a thick, hazy layer of ozone purifiers sprayed from helicopters. On the up side, there are the advances in medicine and plans to construct searails to span the oceans. So that's something.

The science-fiction of this hybrid science-fiction mystery, beside the cryogenic and reanimation, functions mostly as story dressing. However, it gives The Frankenstein Factory a retro-futuristic, alternate history quality that's fun to speculate about. My take is that the humans in this universe tend to be slightly more pragmatic or utilitarian, tick less sociable, which is why there more interested in Venus colonies, searails and reversing death than an internet or smart phones. Not wholly unimportant, it gave what would otherwise have been an average "trapped on an island with a killer" mystery a distinct character of its own. Not that The Frankenstein Factory is a bad whodunit. You can leave it to Hoch to pen a fair play mystery involving experimental surgery, a reanimated corpse and laser guns. It's just that without a science-fiction trappings, The Frankenstein Factory would have come across as a pale imitation of Christie's And Then There Were None.

So it's unfortunate Hoch never really integrated those science-fiction components with the story's detective plot, because that would have made The Frankenstein Factory something more than this strange, zany send-up of Christie. Hoch wrote a good, old-fashioned murder mystery and a tale of science-fiction horror taking place simultaneously with the same cast of characters. That's why I kept second guessing myself even when only two suspects remained, because expected the science-fiction elements would some part or role to play in the solution. I had reasons to believe Frank was not the first person to have been reanimated, which needed to be kept under wraps for the outside world (perhaps that person was a murderer like was suggested of the brain donor). I had one name in mind (ROT13: "...vg tnir ure gur ybbx bs n lbhat tvey sebz gur 1970f") as that person being revealed as both a reanimated person and the killer would give the story a double, morbid twist for the prize of one. No such genre crossing twists, or solution, as Hoch only roamed around the borders and never crossed the line into full-blown hybrid mystery territory. That's a missed opportunity.

The Frankenstein Factory is unlikely to secure a place on my list of best and favorite hybrid mysteries, because the bar for hybrid mysteries has been set astronomically high, but long-time Hoch fans should take note of this rare, novel-length mystery from his hands. Hoch's The Frankenstein Factory is intriguing and not unrewarding mystery as long as you don't expect a classic like Christie's And Then There Were None or Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel (1953/54).

Locked and Loaded, Part 7: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

So lately, I noticed an unaccountable, unacceptable dearth in locked room and impossible crime reviews which needed immediate correction to bring this blog back to its previous acceptable conditions, standards and core values – only one way to do it. There are actually two ways to do it, but the reprint of Pierre Boileau's Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Murderer, 1939) is not out for another six months. I decided to do another "Locked and Loaded" instead.

In 2020, I posted the first part of the extremely irregular "Locked and Loaded" series and have now compiled seven of them covering locked room and impossible crime stories covering a period of 118 years stretching from 1905 to 2023. You can read my reviews, not in chronological order, in "Locked and Loaded" part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. So let's start on part 7.

Fredric Brown's "The Djinn Murder," originally published in the January, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, begins when Professor John E. Trent, teaching Psychology IV (Abnormal), is approached by Harvey Glosterman – who really needs a specialist in the occult. Glosterman's retired brother, John Glosterman, collects "objects connected with primitive superstitions" like "old idols, spirit gongs, juju masks, voodoo drums" and recently brought a djinn bottle home from his travels. An earthenware bottle, "Seal of Solomon on the wax," supposedly emprisoning a very powerful, dangerous demon named Eydhebhe. John Glosterman foolishly broke the seal on the bottle and promptly vanished into thin air. However, the impossibility is not Glosterman's disappearance, but how he continued to communicate with his brother through "spirit rappings" coming from the study. Trent believes Glosterman was cleverly disposed and catches his killer by replicating the rapping sounds.

Now, ghostly tapping and other disembodied sounds tend be minor stuff when it comes to impossible crime fiction. Usually little more than small plot-thread or side issue explained away with variations of the same answers pulled from the spiritual medium's bag of tricks, but Brown offered an entirely new solution to the problem. Or, at least, one that's new to me. Still very minor stuff as both an impossible crime and detective story, but a very entertaining, pulp-style mystery.

Anthony Boucher's "The Anomaly of the Empty Man," first published in the April, 1952, issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, tries to take a page from John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court (1937) by presenting a puzzle with a logical and supernatural solution. "The Anomaly of the Empty Man" is told by a man named Lamb, but not sure if this the Martin Lamb from Boucher's The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937). Anyway, Inspector Abrahams calls Lamb to the apartment of James Stambaugh, collector of early operatic recordings and philanderer, who disappeared from the clothes he had been wearing ("...sucked dry of its fleshly tenant") – which is tighter impossibility than my description suggests ("...try slipping your foot out of a laced-up shoe and see if you can get that result"). What follows is a bit of a trip, but it boils down to Lamb being presented with two solutions to the problem. The supernatural solution comes from Dr. Verner believing the disappearance was caused by a haunted record from dead opera singer whom he believed carried The Death Wish ("men who knew her too well hungered no longer for life"). Inspector Abrahams found a much better, more convincing and really neat answer for how a man can be disappeared from inside his own suit of clothing. Needless to say, I prefer the inspector's solution over Dr. Verner's cursed record.

And no, the culprit was not a tall, green insect-like individual using his javelin-tipped tail as a sippy straw. If that had been Dr. Verner's alternative solution, I would have sided with him over Inspector Abrahams.

Joseph Commings "The Fraudulent Spirit" originally appeared in the September/October, 1960, issue of Mystery Digest (as by "Monte Craven") and reprinted in the anthology Wicked Spirits: Mysteries, Spine Chillers and Lost Tales of the Supernatural (2024). A few years before the story's opening, Mrs. Jasmine Leslie fell to her death from the outdoor terrace of her New York penthouse, twenty stories up, which the police dismissed as an unfortunate accident – because she had gardening gloves on and a a trowel was left on the terrace. Years later, Jasmine's widowed husband, Fergus Leslie, becomes engaged to Suzanne Dittner and falls under the spell of a spiritual medium, Mme. Olympe. She has done the usual routine with spirit writing appearing on the ceiling during a séance in a locked room, making objects drop out of thin air and claiming to have "greater levitation powers" than D.D. Home ("he floated in and outta upper windows of a house on Jermyn Street in London"). Mme. Olympe also needs money to start her own spiritualist movement and Leslie is willing to provide the funds, but only if she perform a truly convincing séance.

Suzanne Dittner turns to Lt. Barney Grant, of the NYPD, for help. Fortunately, Grant just so happens to have Senator Brooks U. Banner as a visitor. Banner is an old hand when it comes spiritual mediums and the fundamentally impossible, but, even better, Banner remembers Mme. Olympe when "she was dressed in a leopard-skin, leading a carnival parade on the biggest elephant at the Minnesota State Fair." So they attend the séance during which Jasmine's ghost appears on the terrace, disappears and reappears moments later on the terrace of the penthouse across the street! Not really an impossible situation involving levitation, but teleportation and not necessarily a bad one. Just a bit muddled in parts and that knocks it down a peg. "The Fraudulent Spirit" started out as a companion in miniature to Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit (1944), but ended up being a kindred spirit of David Renwick's Jonathan Creek series (ROT13: yvxr gur hfr bs na haxabja nppbzcyvpr gb perngr gur vzcbffvoyr fvghngvba). So while not one for the best-of list, "The Fraudulent Spirit" should not fail to entertain fans of these type of impossible crime stories involving séances, fraudulent mediums and ghostly murders.

Jeffry Scott's "The Brick Overcoat," originally published in the December, 1990, issue of EQMM, slowly moves away from the recurring themes of the previous three short stories, but not entirely as one, of two, impossibilities whispered threats – coming from nowhere. Jenny is working on reviving the once derelict Malreward Theater, currently between productions, which has seen its fair share of tragedy over its hundred year history. But did it pick up a few ghosts along the way? Jenny confides in Detective-Sergeant Nick Flinders she has heard a disembodied voice whisper a chilling threat, "I'll make you a brick overcoat," when she was all alone in the empty, locked theater. Nick Flinders is a hardened skeptic ("half the theaters in England are supposed to be haunted"), but promises to investigate and begins to comb through the old theater, "an untidy labyrinth of grimy brick cells," for answers. Flinders finds an answer, but is it the correct answer? It's enough to reassure Jenny, but Flinders soon returns to the theater when his half-answer could be the key to another case. A case in which a package unaccountably disappeared from a locked room. While more of a modern crime story than a traditional, fair play mystery, "The Brick Overcoat" is not a bad story at all and appreciated its classical trimmings.

Simon Clark's "The Adventure of the Fallen Star" was originally written for Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (1997). I reviewed Clark's other Sherlock Holmes pastiche "The Climbing Man" (2015) back in 2021, which presented the Great Detective with a fresh corpse discovered inside a sealed, undisturbed 3000-year-old archaeological site – like it enough to track down this particular pastiche. Sherlock Holmes is asked a favor by Professor Charles Hardcastle, specialized in metallurgical sciences, who once helped him "lay to rest the matter of the golden bullet murders in King's Lynne." Professor Hardcastle is interested in "aerolites" (i.e. meteorites) and has a collection of them in his private laboratory at his home in Homestead. A particular meteorite had recently been taken from the locked laboratory and turned up again in his son's bedroom. Holmes is asked to look if there's something to the case, but, when he arrives with Watson, they find a half mad Hardcastle. The backstory of the meteorite reveals who's behind it all and why, but now how this person got through locked doors. And the answer to that question is a big meh.

Elizabeth Elwood's "The Chess Room," first published in the November/December, 2019, issue of EQMM, closes out this random selection on a high note. The first-half of the story introduces Chloe Helms, a cleaning lady, who works at the Hanover building owned by the wheelchair bound, octogenarian chess fanatic, Jacob Russell – who takes a liking to her. So "the Hanover grapevine buzzed with the rumor that she had become the latest threat to David's inheritance" and David, Jacob's son, is not amused ("the exact term he used was gold digger") causes nothing than misery for Chloe. This situation culminates with the pressure getting too much shooting himself inside his beloved chess room storing his collection of varied chess boards and pieces. Chloe was one of the people standing outside the door when the shot was heard and every other exit was either locked or under observation. The second-half takes a procedural approach to the locked room problem as Detective Constable Annie Blake and her team take charge. There's a part of the locked room-trick that hard, if not impossible, to anticipate, but loved the classically-styled twist.

So, all in all, not a spectacular haul, but not a thoroughly bad one either. When it comes to the locked rooms and impossible situations, only Boucher truly impressed and Brown scoring bonus points for originality. Elwood is a good, solid second. Commings' take on the miraculous levitation/transportation is fun, but too muddled to be really good. I enjoyed Scott's story more for its storytelling than its plotting and Clark's pastiche was meh. Let's hope that the next installment of randomly thrown together impossible crime stories uncovers a real gem, but next up is a classic locked room reprint.

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.

Alias Simon Hawkes (2002) by Philip J. Carraher

I generally prefer homages, parodies and spoofs over outright pastiches, because pastiches seldom measure up to the original and rarely add or outshine the original – imitation has its limitations. So never understood why the estate of Agatha Christie commissioned a bunch of new Hercule Poirot novels, which were never going to be as great or rival the originals. Why not commission writers, like Sophie Hannah, to write a series of Sven Hjerson mysteries under the "Ariadne Oliver" name? Ariadne Oliver and Sven Hjerson can be used to expand on Christie's work without intruding on it. Not to mention fairer to whomever is doing the writing considering it's less of a Herculean task than expecting them to create a new Poirot novel from scratch.

Another problem I have with pastiches, especially Holmesian pastiches, is writers selling their own ideas short by presenting them as imitations. A problem that becomes even worse when the characters and writing aren't perfect imitations of the original. No matter how good the writing, characterization and plot actually is.

For example, Roy Templeman's short story collection Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Junk Affair & Other Stories (1998), which features a pale shadow of the Great Detective, but the plots of "The Chinese Junk Affair" and "The Trophy Room" aren't without merit – fun impossible crime stories in the David Renwick mold. Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Junk Affair has very little to offer for hardcore Sherlockians and ignored everyone else not interested in the "further adventures" of Sherlock Holmes. That's how today's subject got overlooked for more than two decades.

Philip J. Carraher's Alias Simon Hawkes: Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in New York (2002) is one of three volumes of Sherlock Holmes pastiches chronicling his long-lost adventures in New York City during the Great Hiatus. A period during which the Great Detective concealed his identity under the alias "Simon Hawkes." I likely would have never known about Carraher or Alias Simon Hawkes had Brian Skupin not mentioned the collection in the introduction to Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). Skupin noted the stories are "decidedly non-Holmesian, but clever" with "a good locked room mystery." Only locked room fan who acknowledged the collection is Hal White who listed Alias Simon Hawkes ("worth reading") on his website under "Suggested Reading & Viewing." And the few reviews from Sherlock Holmes fans are a bit mixed. So enough to place Alias Simon Hawkes on my special locked room wishlist, but never gave it special attention or top priority.

Why this rambling, quasi-coherent preamble about pastiches? I recently found out Alias Simon Hawkes is still in print and dug around a bit to see if it was worth to snatch up a copy with, as you have seen, meager results, but enough to pique my curiosity – especially the two stories listed in Locked Room Murders: Supplement. They impressed me stories more suitable for today's locked room revival than the lean years of the early 2000s ("The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century"). I decided to just order a copy and judge the stories solely on their merits as detective stories/locked room mysteries rather than Holmesian pastiches.

"The Adventure of the Magic Alibi," a novella, is the first of four stories making up Alias Simon Hawkes and is an inverted mystery in which the murderer is known, but the bastard has an alibi that stands like a fortress. The murderer is question is Clifford Greenleaf, a rich man, who's hobby is magic tricks and is himself a gifted amateur magician. Greenleaf has gained a reputation for throwing fancy dress parties ("imaginative affairs") for high society and entertaining his guests with "feats of wizardry and pretend-witchcraft." Greenleaf is planning a very special theatrical trick, "a feat of magic," performed during a Halloween party to serve as a cover for murder and creating an unbeatable alibi in the process.

During the festivities, Greenleaf is going to enter a specially prepared room, on the second floor, which has only one door and a window permanently nailed shut that morning. The door is going to be locked behind him and guarded by a Chief Inspector of the New York City police, William "Big Bill" Devery. After a minute, the room is unlocked to allow twenty, ten men and ten women, randomly selected party attendees to go inside and investigate – only to discover their host has inexplicably vanished from the locked and guarded room. Apparently having crossed "the unseen bridge between this physical world and the world of departed souls" as promised. Before the trick can be completed with Greenleaf's reappearance, the murder of Virginia Greenleaf is discovered. She had been fatally wounded in her bedroom, but lived long enough to scrawl her murderer's name in blood, "Cliff killed me." Nothing cryptic about that dying message! Only problem is her husband has a very strange, but incontestable, alibi. There are over twenty people, including Devery, who swear Greenleaf was in the locked, guarded room with them without actually seeing him ("...a very unique alibi"). Inspector Cullen's colleagues belief the dying message was a fake, based on the strength of her husband's alibi, but if he's guilty how did he manage to get out and back into the room?

Inspector Cullen turns to Simon Hawkes for help. Hawkes had assisted Cullen before in The Adventure of the Dead Rabbits Society (2001) and the problem of the magical alibi appears to be better fix to keep boredom away than his usual 7% solution. The setup of the story is great! A crime adhering to Tetsuya Ayukawa's believe that an alibi is a locked room in time and a locked room an alibi in space, which Carraher smashed together. For example, the plan requires a fake locked room-trick to explain Greenleaf's unseen presence inside the locked, watched room. So the setup is first-rate stuff. Unfortunately, the second-act and solution to the locked room alibi are not. And that while there was a much better, more convincing solution staring you in the face (ROT13): nyy lbh arrq vf tvzzvpx gur jvaqbj gb znxr vg nccrne vg jnf anvyrq fuhg (phg-bss anvyf, rgp. cvpx lbhe gevpxf). Nsgre ragrevat gur ebbz, Terrayrns fvzcyl bcraf gur ebbz, fgrcf bhg ba n ynqqre, pybfrf gur jvaqbj naq rvgure tyhrf vg fuhg be hfrf pynzf gb znxr vg nccrne sebz gur vafvqr vg'f ybpxrq naq anvyrq fuhg. Ohg hfvat tyhr jbhyq tvir uvz nabgure ernfba gb jnvg jvgu evfvat gur nynez, orfvqr przragvat uvf nyvov. Vg arrqrq gvzr gb qel. Jura gur zheqre vf qvfpbirerq naq thneqf ner chyyrq njnl sebz gur ybpxrq qbbe, Terrayrns fvzcyl hfrf uvf fcner xrl gb tb onpx vafvqr gb or sbhaq jura gur ebbz vf haybpxrq. Not a blistering original solution, but it eliminates (ROT13) gur arrq sbe n crfxl, gebhoyrfbzr nppbzcyvpr jub arrqf qvfcbfvat naq Terrayrns univat gb qvfthvfr uvzfrys nf n jbzna. Fhpu vzcrefbangvba gevpxf vaibyivat jvtf, naq jungabg, eneryl pbzr npebff nf nalguvat ohg frpbaq-engr. This would have shortened the novella to a short story, but sometimes less is really more. Still enjoyed the overall story, despite the second-half and ending failing to live up to the excellently posed problem of the miracle alibi.

The second and first short story of the collection is "The Adventure of the Captive Forger" and brings Simon Hawkes into contact with an art dealer, named William Lancaster, who has "a reputation for being able to discern forgeries." Lancaster tells Hawkes at the Dead Rabbits Society he has gotten a lucrative, but troublesome, offer to go the home of one Charles Buonocore to appraise some sketches. A battered Lancaster returns the next day with a strange story of a long carriage ride in the dark to a remote, lonely house where a young woman's being held captive and barely escaped the ordeal with his life. And he has no idea how to find the house again.

If the premise sounds somewhat familiar, you're correct. "The Adventure of the Captive Forger" is a rewrite of one of Conan Doyle's worst Sherlock Holmes short stories, "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" (1892). Only real difference is in the characters and settings, but, in every other regard, they are essentially the same story following exactly the same pattern – right down to the ending (ROT13: ubhfr sver naq bar bs gur pevzvanyf trggvat njnl). Even worse, Holmes barely does anything in the original short story except retracing the route the house by figuring out the carriage-trick. Only thing Hawkes has to here is to recall the case of that young engineer Victor Hatherley, "he too was taken on a ride in a carriage," and remarking how striking the similarities between cases are. No shit, Sherlock! And, no, I don't accept the argument that the story is clever self-parody about forgers missing the creative spark to create art themselves.

Detective story or pastiche, either way you cut it, "The Adventure of the Captive Forger" is lazy, irredeemable trash and a case-in-point why not every detective fan is keen on exploring the lost adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Fortunately, "The Adventure of the Glass Room" is the best story of the collection and the reason why Alias Simon Hawkes was even noticed by Skupin and White. A tricky, complicated locked-room-within-a-locked-room mystery. The story begins with Sherlock Holmes, alias Simon Hawkes, is talking at the Dead Rabbits Society with a former client and devout spiritualist, Alwyn Pritchett. Pritchett is boosting to Hawkes about a method he devised "to assure the authenticity of any psychic phenomenon" during a séance. A glass structure, or cube, erected in his own parlor with a glass door that can be bolted from the inside. The only furniture in the glass room is a small table and two chairs. One for Pritchett and the other for the spiritual medium, Charlotte Davreux. Nobody's allowed inside the parlor, beside Pritchett and Davreux, which is also securely locked. So no room for the usual trickery. Hawkes is surprised when the news arrive the next day Pritchett and Davreux died in an apparent murder/suicide.

According to the evidence, Pritchett shot Davreux before turning the gun on himself. They were all alone, sitting in the glass room, the door bolted from the inside and the parlor securely locked ("...a sealed room of glass that is itself standing within a locked room"). So the involvement of a third person seems impossible. Hawkes finds an explanation to explain the seemingly impossible from droplets of blood found in an odd place and reasoning from there. The locked room-trick is complicated and a bit patchy with some points raising an eyebrow, but not bad and a really involved solution fits the tricky, equally complicated and involved presentation of the murders. Just read it before any of the other stories, because you'll appreciate it more (SPOILER/ROT13): fvzvyne gb gur svefg fgbel, gur fbyhgvba erdhverf n crfxl, oheqrefbzr nppbzcyvpr naq gur zheqrere vzcrefbangvat n jbzna.

If "The Adventure of the Magic Alibi," is too long, "The Adventure of the Talking Ghost," the fourth and final story, is too short. Simon Hawkes receives news from London that "the criminal empire of Professor Moriarty now lay shattered" ("an exception of note was the escape of Colonel Sebastian Moran") and considers shedding his new identity to resurrect Sherlock Holmes. While pondering his option, Hawkes receives the news that an ex-client, Joseph Carter, was shot and killed by a gypsy fortune teller. Madam Tollier claimed she shot Carter in self-defense after he tried to attack her with his sword stick. But why? Carter tried to kill the medium to "silence a ghost." Carter's daughter died recently in a drowning accident, but her ghost told him she was murdered ("my killer must be punished"). After his daughter's accident, his wife was killed during a mugging in Central Park. Now he has been shot!

Something fishy is going on! "The Adventure of the Talking Ghost" should have been an intriguingly played, meticulously executed breakdown of Madam Tollier's identity and motive, which would have justified the length of the opening novella. Now it almost feels like the solution is thrown out there when the time comes for Hawkes to simply recognize her (SPOILER/ROT13: pbzcyrgr jvgu chyyvat njnl n jvt. Lrf, gur guveq fgbel va juvpu gur zheqrere hfrf n tbqqnza jvt). There's undoubtedly a good, Doylean-style detective story hiding in here, but Carraher only caught a glimpse of it.

Alias Simon Hawkes is the expected mixed bag of tricks with the first-half of "The Adventure of the Magic Alibi" and "The Adventure of the Glass Room" standing out, but, read back-to-back, the stories come across as repetitive and derivative. Funnily enough, there's a short "About the Author" stating that Carraher believes "each new book should not merely be a practiced variation of the previous one." These stories are all practiced variations on previous/other stories. I already mentioned (SPOILER/ROT13) gjb bs gur fgbevrf eryl ba gebhoyrfbzr nppbzcyvprf naq gur zheqrere vzcrefbangvat n jbzra, juvpu ur ergheaf gb va gur guveq fgbel jvgu n oybaqr jbzna vzcrefbangvat n tlcfl jbzna jvgu n oynpx jvt naq znxrhc, ohg gurer'f nyfb gur fcvevghnyvfg frg qerffvat naq jnyxvat fgvpxf uvqvat jrncbaf. That's why I recommended reading "Glass Room" first. It's the best and most practiced variation of Callaher's favored plot-ingredients. And the only story I can honestly recommended to impossible crime fanatics.

Locked and Loaded, Part 5: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

Every now and then, I do one of these "Locked and Loaded" posts to read and review mostly obscure, often uncollected short locked room mysteries and impossible crime stories covering nearly a century of miraculous crime fiction – stretching from Charles G. Booth's "One Shot" (1925) to James Scott Byrnside's "The Silent Steps of Murder" (2023). I discuss those two short stories, and everything in between, in Part 1, 2, 3 and 4. This fifth installment adds three more obscure, rarely reviewed short locked room mysteries and one magnificent impostor. So without further ado...

Christopher Anvil's "The Drop of a Pin," originally published in the April, 1974, issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, is part of a short-lived, now forgotten series about a somewhat unusual detective. Richard Verner is not a detective, technically speaking, but a heuristician. It translated to someone specialized in solving problems or a troubleshooter.

Verner is called to "Grove's Lake Cabins" by the local sheriff to assist him on an apparently open-and-shut case that simply doesn't sit well with him ("...I don't believe the evidence"). The owner of the cabin park, Grove, was found with a knife sticking out of his chest behind the triple locked door of the cabin he shared with his niece, Ellen Grove. A large, spacious cabin has a large room and bath at each end separated by an insulated wall with no door in it, which divides the living quarters of niece and uncle. So when her uncle failed to emerge from his part of the cabin, Ellen grabbed an electric saw and cut a doorway into the insulated dividing wall as it would have been easier than to smash the door or one of the windows. Unfortunately, cutting a doorway into the dividing wall immediately elevated Ellen to the status of prime suspect as the only door on her uncle's side was locked, bolted and securely chained – similar to the door on her side of the cabin. So nobody could have sneaked out that way, once Ellen had cut through the wall and ventured inside to discover the body. And, of course, the windows were all securely locked as well.

A phenomenal locked room setup! One that today's crop of locked room specialists would probably get a lot of mileage out of and had the solution been more than an elaborate take on a familiar locked room-trick, it would have been a little more than merely a solid locked room howdunit. Nevertheless, I enjoyed "The Drop of a Pin," especially the whole setup, enough to keep an eye out for the other stories. Christopher Anvil and Richard Verner might be of interest to Crippen & Landru as there appear to be enough material for a short story collection.

Robert C. Schweik's "Imagine a Murder," originally published in the June, 1978, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, is another story from an even shorter-lived, now forgotten series of detective stories. This series of three short stories stars an amateur detective of the old school, Professor Paul Engel, whose method is simply to analyze a problem, speculate on it and apply a dab of rich imagination – "just imagine what possibilities there are." So when his friend and bookseller, Harry, overhears the murder of his roommate over the telephone, Professor Engel is on his way to put his analytical mind and imagination to work. The victim, Markham, was an accountant working on a report that would place someone behind bars and called Harry to ask him to post a letter, which is when he got shot. Inexplicably, the place was locked and bolted from top to bottom ("...the entire apartment was buttoned down"). So how could the murderer and gun vanish from a thoroughly locked room with a crowd gathered in the hallway outside the locked door shortly after the gunshot rang out?

This story shares some outward similarities with Anvil's "The Drop of a Pin." Schweik created a pleasingly tight and baffling locked room scenario with the revelation of the murderer's identity adding a second, quasi-impossibility in the form of a cast-iron alibi. One hinging on the other. Just like the previous story, "Imagine a Murder" is an elaborate, pleasing and, in this case, fairly clued reworking of a classic locked room-technique/trick. So not a blistering original, cutting edge locked room mystery, but a solid, competently plotted impossible crime story. And not a bad one to help fill a future impossible crime themed anthology.

Jack Ritchie's "Cardula and the Locked Rooms," originally published in the March, 1982, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and collected in The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories (1983), sailed pass me under a false flag and not a locked room mystery – nor any other kind of impossible crime. Nevertheless, I was pleased to have stumbled to it right after my previous read. "Cardula and the Locked Rooms" is eighth of nine comic private eye short stories about Cardula (Dracula) who "has been forced to leave his home country of Romania after being thrown out of his castle by communists" and moved to America to become a slick, nighttime private detective ("I am simply a night person"). Mike Grost praised the series for its many pleasant touches of "logical fantasy." Cardula is hired by a man named Thompson ("blood type B, I guessed") who bought a stolen Van Gogh years ago. The painting was his private pleasure for five years, but now it has been stolen from a private room. A simple case of breaking and entering, but who knew Thompson possessed a stolen Van Gogh?

Cardula is paid a handsome fee to locate and retrieve the painting, which is simple enough, but the theft of the painting and how it was stolen comes with a neat, well-done little twist worthy of Edward D. Hoch's best Nick Velvet stories. Of course, the fun and main draw of the story, and obviously the series as a whole, is Cardula's double role as detective and vampire. So another series of stories that needs further attention and looking into at some future date.

The last two short stories were nominated in the first round of voting for the "New Locked Room Library" and come from the same author, "Miŏgacu." Just like the previous review, I was gives copies of the short stories and told not to be smart ass who asks too many questions. So no background on the author nor stories except that "Miŏgacu" is a huge mystery fan who wrote the following two short stories as a homage to the Grandest Game in the World with the hope of having them properly published one day.

"Eggnog and the Cylinder" (2023) can be categorized as an impossible crime caper in the style of Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin and Gosho Aoyama's Kaito KID. A French millionaire by the name of M. Aristide Benguet bought "the largest purple sapphire in the world on a whim" and decided to keep The Feline of Somerset in a locked room at his country home, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, to be displayed at a fancy Christmas party – which caught the attention of a renaissance criminal. Phantom Thief Lenoir, "dashing and masked," has become the scourge of the rich and famous of Europe as a modern-day Robin Hood. M. Benguet is taking extreme measures to protect the sapphire by engaging four different detectives/security agents from across the world to guard the sapphire in the locked room during the party. There's a rotating system to allow the detectives to take a break ("...stretch your legs, empty your bladder, grab some champagne"), but three detectives will stay with the sapphire in the locked room at all time.

A fail proof security measure, however, when their assignment comes to an end, they discover the sapphire has been replaced with a fake! Somehow, someway, Phantom Thief Lenoir switcharoo'd The Feline of Somerset under the nose of four detectives inside a securely locked room.

This story comes with a short "Author's Postface" in which "Miŏgacu" explains the inspiration for "Eggnog and the Cylinder" came from reading a description of the locked room puzzle in Marcel Lanteaume's untranslated, frustratingly out-of-reach Trompe l'oeil (1946) – realized "there is a very simple solution." That very simple solution is actually the cleverest, wildly imaginative and most original locked room-trick of the stories discussed so far. A trick certainly in the spirit of Lanteaume "in which imagination leaps confidently over probability" and perhaps a trick that would be hard to swallow in a regular locked room mystery, but perfectly suited for "a Japanese-y phantom thief story." It's unexpected gems like this making the future of the traditional Western (locked room) mysteries look very bright indeed. Not to mention a story with the potential to age like fine wine, if it ever turns out "Miŏgacu" constructed to correct solution from a short description of Lanteaume's Trompe l'oeil locked room puzzle. And makes me want to overlook (ROT13) gur znffvir onyyf vg gbbx gb abzvangr uvf bja jbex sbe pbafvqrengvba.

The second story, "The First Meeting" (2017/23), is a homage to the Japanese shin honkaku mysteries (and a pastiche, of sorts) and particular to the teenage detectives of series such as Case Closed, The Kindaichi Case Files and Q.E.D. Niimoto Tadashi is the son of a typical, storybook detective, Tsukiko, who had to solve the Yellow Mask Mystery on her wedding day. Tadashi was never shielded from his mother's investigation, but "never knew corpses raining down upon him" like some other child detectives. So a relatively normal childhood, but, on his sixteenth birthday, Tadashi "made his first step to detectivehood." Tadashi got his own Watson, Zhenya, who's the son of a Russian scientist staying as a guest at the Niimoto home. Tadashi and Zhenya throw themselves at a local locked room murder.

On the morning January 18, 2005, the esteemed neurosurgeon, Furuta Fujio, was found stabbed to death in his stuffy, everyday working study with door locked from the inside and the key sticking out of the keyhole – windows either didn't open or looked over an obstacle. Such as a roaring river or locked garden gate. So the scene of the crime resembles "an impenetrable capsule," but trick is not nearly as good or even half as inspired as the brilliant solution to the previous story. An enormous step down, judged purely as an impossible crime story. On the other hand, simply as a homage to those meddling kid detectives of the manga/anime corner of the shin honkaku mysteries, "The First Meeting" is first class.

Not a bad harvest for a handful of, more or less, randomly selected short stories. Anvil's "The Drop of a Pin" and Schweik's "Imagine a Murder" didn't bring anything new or really innovative to the table, but showed some ingenuity in presentation and a solid hand in their solutions. Despite the misleading title, Ritchie's "Cardula and the Locked Rooms" is an unexpected treasure and it goes without saying "Eggnog and the Cylinder" is the standout with "The First Meeting" having charm and qualities outside of its locked room puzzle. I told you I would pick something good eventually. :)

My Late Wives: "She Wouldn't Kill Patience" (2002) by Ooyama Seiichiro

Ooyama Seiichiro is a Japanese mystery writer specialized in themes series and short story collections, best known today for the "Alibi Cracking, At Your Service" series, who debuted on the e-NOVELS website with a pastiche of John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell – entitled "Kanojo ga Patience wo korosu hazu ga nai" ("She Wouldn't Kill Patience," 2002). The short story obviously is a homage to He Wouldn't Kill Patience (1944; as by "Carter Dickson"), which was Carr's answer to Clayton Rawson's challenge to craft a locked room mystery where the crime scene is sealed on the inside with tape. Rawson provided his own answer in the short story "From Another World" (1948) and recently A. Carver tackled the problem of a murderer inexplicably escaping from multiple, tape-shut rooms with The Author is Dead (2022). Ooyama Seiichiro's "She Wouldn't Kill Patience" is a fascinating addition to this sub-category of the locked room mystery.

"She Wouldn't Kill Patience" opens one evening in the study of Dr. Fell, Number I Adelphi Terrace, where he's entertaining Superintendent Hadley, Sergeant Higgins and the solicitor Frank Morstan. Dr. Fell notices something is on the solicitor's mind.

Frank Morstan has recently gotten engaged to Marjorie Copperfield, but so has her mother and his future mother-in-law, the long-widowed and wealthy Mrs. Marie Copperfield – which came as a surprise, or shock, to everyone. The man in question is a middle-aged, French historian and lecturer, Georges Lefebvre, who's ten years her junior and viewed with suspicion ("perhaps he is after the Mrs. Copperfield's money"). Not without reason. Superintendent Hadley recognizes a French serial killer and fugitive, named Charles Raspail, in Morstan's description of Georges Lefebvre. Hadley calls Raspail "the rebirth of Henri Désiré Landru from his homeland, or George Joseph Smith of England," who had three wives die under mysterious circumstances. Only difference between him and those two is Raspail is "much more clever and cunning" as he varied his methods and techniques. An overdose of sleeping medication or a fall from a third-floor balcony. So it took some time for the authorities to catch on, but, when they finally cottoned on, Raspail fled to England and simply disappeared.

So, knowing what they know now, Mrs. Copperfield is certainly going to be targeted next. Hadley orders Higgins to keep an eye on the current M. Lefebvre, which they go get the file at Scotland Yard to convince Mrs. Copperfield. However, they arrive too late. Mrs. Copperfield is discovered dead in her bedroom with the gas-tap screwed open to a maximum with the door and windows "sealed tightly by long, thin strips of vellum pasted along the gaps." Obviously suicide. However, Mrs. Copperfield is not the only body in the gas-filled room. Near the gas-tap stood the birdcage with Mrs. Copperfield's parrot, Patience, lying at the bottom pining for the fjords. Marjorie is sure the dead parrot proves her mother was murdered as "my mother wouldn't kill Patience" ("...she hoped it would live the rest of it out in peace"). But how? Even Dr. Fell has to admit, "I know many methods to lock a room from the outside, but this is the first time I see it sealed."

The locked room-trick is a real humdinger! Sure, you can call the trick a new wrinkle on an old chestnut, but really enjoyed how this idea was applied to the puzzle of the tape-sealed room. More importantly, "She Wouldn't Kill Patience" is not an impossible crime tale where the murderer is easily spotted and the trick carrying the whole plot. Ooyama Seiichiro refused to go with the obvious throughout the story, which made for an excellent denouement as Dr. Fell exposed both the truth and pointing out the killer. My only complaint is that motive felt a trifle weak when held next to the rather ingenious and involved method, which required a weightier motive to justify it. Other than that, "She Wouldn't Kill Patience" is a first-class locked room mystery and exactly what pastiches should aspire to be. A story written with love and respect for the original.

Note for the curious: you're probably wondering where you can find and read this story. Someone emailed me this unofficial translation to read and review, if I wanted to review the story. I decided to review it simply to try and generate some attention for Ooyama Seiichiro, because I would love to see official translations of "The Red Museum" and "The Locked Room Collector" series.

Terrarium Nine: "Murder in the Urth Degree" (1989) by Edward Wellen

Earlier this month, I revisited the short-lived Dr. Wendell Urth series of short stories, "Earth is An Armchair: The Wendell Urth Quartet by Isaac Asimov," which was brought back to my attention by two anonymous comments left on The Caves of Steel (1953/54) review – recommending the Edward Wellen pastiche "Murder in the Urth Degree" ("...which has perturbed me ever since"). "Murder in the Urth Degree" is a pastiche specially written for Foundation's Friends, Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov (1989) with short stories set in Asimov's universe. I'll admit right off the bat this is a good short story and pastiche, but not for the reason you might think.

Terrarium Nine is one of a dozen hydroponics in near-earth orbit comprising of six concentric spheres with a pseudo black hole at the center to provide Earth-gravity for the innermost sphere. In this future, there are laws in place "against releasing genetically altered plants and animals into the terrestrial environment." So experiments have to be done off-place and the Terrariums in near-earth orbit were created for exactly that purpose.

Keith Flammersfeld, "the lone experimenter aboard Terrarium Nine," is hard worker and only occasionally takes a break to enjoy an interactive video. When the story opens, Flammersfeld is enjoying an interactive video of Through the Looking Glass, but, shortly after plugging out, discovers "someone had entered his system and infected it with rabid doggerel" ("who will win the Red Queen's race?"). A computer virus? A very elusive stowaway who suddenly made its presence known to Flammersfeld? The answer, or part of the answer, is found in the disturbance, uprooted soil of a cabbage patch in Buck Two. Flammersfeld "knew perfectly well what had grown at this particular spot, what should still be growing here, what seemed now on the loose" – stalking and targeting him ("how could he not have seen its intelligence waken, its hate turn on him?"). And he does not survive the encounter.

Now you might think I've revealed too much or Wellen tipped his hand too early, which is not the case. Wellen just managed expectations very well by not being too mysterious about what exactly was running loose in Buck Two of Terrarium Nine. It just needed a lot of horrifying details filled in.

That brings Inspector H. Seton Davenport, of the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation, to the extraterrologists' extraterrologist, Dr. Wendell Urth. From the point of the view of the investigators, the death of Flammersfeld presents something of an impossible crime ("we can't call it accident, we can't call it murder, and we're not ready to call it suicide”) on a isolated space station with an array of bizarre clues and facts. Flammersfeld died from a poison-tipped dart, "a weird kind of curare crudely prepared," of which the remnants were found in a walnut shell along with a crude, toy-like catapult and winch ("...contraptions looked as if a child might have put them together"). And a decomposed cabbage! So had the story not been a quasi-inverted mystery showing from the beginning the murderer is non-human, the ending would have been something of a letdown. Well, not to its purely science-fiction audience, but the visiting detective fan certainly would have been disappointed. Now "Murder in the Urth Degree" stands as the most striking of the Wendell Urth short stories. An imitation outshining the original!

However, "Murder in the Urth Degree" is perhaps closer to a science-fiction/horror hybrid seasoned with a pinch of existential dread than an actual science-fiction mystery, but a great short story regardless. I enjoyed it. Thanks for the recommendation, Anon!

Bughouse Chess: "The Pawns of Death" (1974) by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann

Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann's "The Pawns of Death" originally appeared in the August, 1974, issue of the short-lived, quarterly publication Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine under a shared pseudonym "Robert Hart Davis" – a house name of Renown Publications. Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine was apparently Renown Publication's attempt to mine past glory and licensed the character to carry their new quarterly. Each issue has a "brand new" Charlie Chan novella as its marque, but "an idea whose time had probably passed by then" and the magazine got discontinued after only four issues.

"The Pawns of Death" is the fourth and last of these newly written Charlie Chan pasticheWhile I enjoyed Earl Derr Biggers' original novels, especially Behind That Curtain (1928) and Charlie Chan Carries On (1930), the pastiches would have passed under my radar had it not been pointed out by one of the usual suspects, Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). Even then I didn't immediately connect "The Pawns of Death" by Robert Hart Davis in Adey with Pronzini and Wallmann's "The Pawns of Death" reprinted by Wildside Press. But eventually the penny dropped. And someone, somewhere, a long time ago recommended it as an excellent pastiche.

I've aired my general skepticism about detective pastiches in the past, because trying to write a good, convincing or even a passable pastiche always struck me as walking through a minefield – situated in the middle of a field of rakes. A pastiche either fails miserably to measure up to the original or so bad it stains it or being a pastiche detracts from a writer's own qualities. Good ideas or writing whose qualities get lessened or overlooked, because they're presented as imitations. For example, I think the titular novella from Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Junk Affair and Other Stories (1998) could have been more than a curio or another Sherlock Holmes imitation had Roy Templeman created his own detective-character. There have, of course, been writers who absolutely nailed a detective pastiche. Jill Paton Walsh's completion of Dorothy L. Sayers' last Lord Peter Wimsey novel (Thrones, Dominations, 1998) and continuation of the series (A Presumption of Death, 2002) are prime example of excellent pastiches. Dale C. Andrew and Kurt Sercu's "The Book Case" (2007), starring a 100-year-old Ellery Queen, is personal favorite that added to the EQ canon and lore.

However, finding that Goldilocks zone for pastiches appears to be an incredibly difficult and tricky thing to do. It seems much more success is to be gained with original homages (James Scott Byrnside's Goodnight Irene, 2018), outright parodies (Barry Ergang's "The Audiophile Murder Case," 1982) or a measured combination of a homage, parody and pastiche (Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives, 1936). So that brings us to the all important question to be answered: were Pronzini and Wallmann successful in finding and landing "The Pawns of Death" in the Goldilocks zone? Let's find out!

Charlie Chan is in Paris, France, to attend the Transcontinental Chess Tournament at the "luxurious and Gallic" Hotel Frontenac ("his interest in, and love of, the intricate game was well known throughout the chess world"). Chan is accompanied by his friend and Parisian lawman, Prefect Claude DeBevre. While their attendance is purely a pleasure trip, there are rising tensions and hostilities between the defending champion and his young challenger. Roger Mountbatten is the reigning, three-time Transcon champion who accuses his American challenger, Grant Powell, of cheating during their first few of potential twenty-four games ("...continue to meet head-to-head until one of them acquired a total of 12-1/2 points and was crowned the new champion of Transcon chess"). They do not much to hide their mutual animosity.

When Powell wins another match, Mountbatten refuses to shake hands, "yet another example of unethical if not downright illegal chess to boot," before storming off angrily. Powell takes childish joy in publicly needling Mountbatten ("we're in the presence of the soon-to-be dethroned Transcon champion in all his bitter, whining glory"). Even their respective entourage get in on the action and make very public scenes in the hotel. Charlie Chan is a keen student of the human condition and knows "harsh emotions such as those which had been displayed could all too easily erupt into violence." There's a scene to which neither Chan nor Claude DeBevre are privy, except the reader, which shows someone at the hotel already tried to commit cold blooded murder.

Only problem is that the gun refused to work. So the would-be-assassin decides on a more sophisticated method befitting the world's most cerebral game. Something like "a locked-room death to puzzle the police completely" ("chess and a baffling murder what a beautifully ironic combination").

Surely enough, it does not take long before a body, shot to death, is discovered in a hotel room with the windows securely latched and the door locked from the inside, but the sheer impossibility of the murder is not only mystery. Firstly, the victim is not who you would expect from the premise. Secondly, the odd "bullet" the police digs out of the mattress. This is not the last murder at the hotel. A mortally wounded man is discovered in another locked hotel room who mutters with his dying breath a last, cryptic remark ("another murder, this time with an enigmatic dying message"). The whole situation has Claude DeBevre perplexed, "a gun that will not fire, bullets that cannot work, not one but two locked-room murders," but Chan has a pretty good how the murder was committed. And narrows down his suspects to only two names. But who? Chan baits a little trap to lure out and ensnare the killer.

So where does "The Pawns of Death" fall as a pastiche? I say it falls just within the Goldilocks zone. First of all, Pronzini and Wallmann's portrayal of Charlie Chan is no smudge or stain on the original. I've never seen any of the movies, but understand they didn't do the legacy of the character any long-term good. This incarnation is not an exact one-on-one copy of the Charlie Chan who appeared in the six original novels, however, the character is treated respectfully and made me want to revisit Behind That Curtain or Charlie Chan Carries On. So, on that account alone, "The Pawns of Death" is a reasonably successful pastiche of the character. But what about the plot? Well, the plot is a bit rough around the edges and the characters, setting and story obviously written around the locked room-trick and dying message idea. That helped in piecing everything together long before the murderer walks into Chan's trap. I had completely solved it by the end of Chapter X and that was before the second murder with the dying message clue. The discovery and nature of the strange bullet, sort of, gives away what type of trick must have been used, which is not one that always enjoys great popularity among impossible crime fanatics (SPOILER/ROT13: n uvqqra qrivpr) and the second murder hardly qualifies as a proper locked room puzzle (SPOILER/ROT13: n qhcyvpngr xrl). So the rough, unpolished plot is what pushed this novella to the outer edge of the so-called Goldilocks zone. Regardless, I tremendously enjoyed reading this continuation of the Charlie Chan series and interesting considering how relatively early it came in Pronzini's career.

Reportedly, Pronzini "doesn't seem to think much of this early effort," but it contains some ideas he would return to later and improve. Such as the trick to the first murder or the dying message inside a locked room, of which the classic Nameless Detective short story "The Pulp Connection" (1979) is the best example. A locked room dying message also features in the more recent The Paradise Affair (2021). The characters and plot would actually translate very well to a Carpenter and Quincannon novel, because there so much to expand upon (the chess feud, investigating the cheating accusations, the first attempt and locked rooms and dying message) with the added benefit of a charming historical setting. All it needs is a better solution to the first locked room murder and second impossibility can be easily fixed by having the scared, dying victim lock the door to keep the murderer from coming back ("...the workings of a dying man's fevered mind") – consequently locked out any form of immediate life saving help. Yes, a routine locked room-trick, or solution, but allowable for a second, or third, additional locked room. I'm rambling and flogging my hobby horse again.

So, yes, "The Pawns of Death" is not a groundbreaking locked room mystery, but it's a perfectly serviceable and thoroughly entertaining pastiche. And piqued my interest in the other three Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine novellas as they were written by Dennis Lynds/Michael Collins. Who has been frequently discussed on this blog under his "William Arden" penname and reviewed his short story "The Bizarre Case Expert" (1970) a few years ago. "The Silent Corpse" honestly sounds like a cracking yarn. I also plan on tracking down Pronzini's other, earlier locked room short stories like "The Perfect Crime" (1968), "A Killing in Xanadu" (1980), "Cat's Paw" (1986) and "Ace in the Hole" (1986), but I'm flogging that poor hobby horse again. And you get the idea by now. You can expect a future review of "The Silent Corpse," before I decide whether "Walk Softly, Strangler" (1973) and "The Temple of the Golden Horde" (1974) are worth it. To be continued...

A (final) note for the curious: Pronzini and Wallmann collaborated on another short locked room mystery, "The Half-Invisible Man" (1974), which stands out not for its plot machinations, but its detective character. Sadly, the story is Patrolman Fred Gallagher's only appearance.

Oh, just one last thing: I really went on, bloating this review, but didn't even touch upon how the curious murder weapon dated the setting of the story as no earlier than the 1950s, but likely somewhere around the late 1960s or early '70s. Charlie Chan made his first appearance in The House Without a Key (1925) and if this novella takes place close to its publication date, Chan has barely aged a day in nearly fifty years!

The English Garden Mystery (2022) by Dan Andriacco

Last time, I babbled incessantly about "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century," rattling on how the reprint renaissance and translation wave is already leaving its traces, but those visible traces do not stop at a locked room resurgence – even if you don't always get that idea from this blog. So today's review has no murders in hermetically sealed rooms or someone disappearing at the end of a trail of footprints in the snow. Instead, it's a pure, undiluted fair play whodunit.

Back in November, I learned of Dan Andriacco's The English Garden Mystery (2022) when Ellery Queen: A Website on Deduction highlighted it as "an homage to Golden Age great Ellery Queen." A modern-day mystery complete with a dying message, false-solution, challenge to the reader and even a subtitle ("A Problem in Deduction"). Andriacco is a former journalist, reviewer and an active member of the Baker Street Irregulars who writes detective novels and wrote on his blog, "all of my books owe a lot to Golden of mystery fiction," but none more than The English Garden Mystery. In another blog-post, "The Logical Successor to Sherlock Holmes," Andriacco calls his series-detective a devotee of EQ whose "exploits often include the Queenian tropes of the dying message and the false-solution" with his latest adventure being "an out-and-out homage to Queen."

The English Garden Mystery is the thirteenth novel starring the celebrated mystery writer, Sebastian McCabe, whose side career as a local amateur detective is chronicled by his brother-in-law, Jeff Cody. The entire series takes place in the small town of Erin on the banks of the Ohio River and the town with its inhabitants appears to be as much of a "character" as McCabe and Cody. An apparently living, breathing and buzzing community as the story is littered with footnotes referring back to previous events or appearances of characters and locations. Such as meeting with a local lawyer or museum director whom McCabe and Cody had met before other times, "on the edges of cases," which have footnotes referring back to two short stories, "Art in the Blood" and "Foul Ball" – respectively collected in Rogues Galley (2014) and Murderer's Row (2020). While another footnote informs the reader that the setting from No Ghosts Need Apply (2021) had "gone out of business after COVID and a murder." Yes, even the fictitious town of Erin, Ohio, was unable to escape the pandemic and The English Garden Mystery finds the town "much changed by the COVID-19 pandemic" with "some of our old friends gone forever and others transformed."

I mention all of this because, as of this writing, The English Garden Mystery is the latest addition to the series and, chronologically challenged as ever, I dropped in at the end simply for the dying message, false-solution and EQ fanboying. That left me feeling disconnected from most of the characters and parts of the stories, but that's wholly on me. Not Andriacco. So this review will be limited to discussing the plot and its treatment of those Queenian tropes of the dying message and false-solution.

The English Garden Mystery begins as Erin emerges from the COVID lockdowns and their social bubbles, "still stir-crazy from a year of social distancing and Zoom meetings," to attend a fundraiser for the Erin Arts Council in the English garden at the Bainbridge family compound of houses known as Stratford Court. Ezra Bainbridge is "the pater familias of one of the oldest of Erin's old-money families" and Shakespearean scholar who named his triplet daughters, Desdemona, Portia and Ophelia, after characters from the Bard's plays ("...Des is the bad girl, Portia is the socialite and Ophelia is the scholar"). The story's opening finds the elderly Ezra Bainbridge in poor health, "battling brain fog in the wake of COVID-19," confining the patriarch mostly to a wheelchair and getting pushed around by his much younger wife, Fleur. She gets accused by Desdemona and Portia of elder abuse and adultery, but their sister Ophelia does not believe it. So asks McCabe and Cody to drop by Stratford Court to observe for themselves nothing is going on ("nobody observes more than Sebastian McCabe, except maybe Sherlock Holmes on a good day").

Before the long, the personal favor becomes a full-blown murder case when Ophelia's body is found, "hit in the head with a marble bookend in an art deco design," holding a bright yellow bell-shaped flower – a columbine from the garden at Stratford Court. Erin Police Chief Oscar Hummel believes the murder is a bungled burglary, but McCabe believes the presence of the flower argues otherwise. Ophelia was a puzzle fiend who loved word games, anagrams and "the dying message stories of detective story great Ellery Queen" who reviewed detective stories for the Oxford Gazette and taught a course on "Locked Rooms and Dying Messages." So reasons a dying Ophelia must have taken "the columbine out of that vase after the killer left as she sought to tell us who killed her." A classic dying message straight out of the Golden Age detective stories! Why not? Leaving a dying message is something that would occur to someone who reads and collects Ellery Queen. Just one problem: the murderer is not even close to being done and every murder comes with its own floral tribute. So the flowery clue goes from a potential dying message to the killer's cryptic calling card. Or is it?

I noted earlier that airdropping into the thirteenth title in the series with its living setting and cast of recurring characters made me feel disconnected from the characters and parts of the story, but nothing to muddy the clarity or cleverness of the EQ-style plot.

Andriacco carefully constructed the correct-and false-solution alongside each other with enough clues and red herrings to delight, or frustrate, the amateur armchair detective who wants a shot at beating McCabe to the solution. Something that's absolutely doable with the given clues, even if you miss a small detail or two. Although the hook of the plot is the dying message/calling card and false-solution, The English Garden Mystery played the Queenian trope of the fallible detective card slightly better. There was already a hint and characters suggesting McCabe's luck ("let us say good fortune rather than luck") as the local Sherlock Holmes is eventually going run out, which all nicely builds up towards gathering all the suspects in the library to present and destroy the false-solution – punctuated by a short challenge to the reader ("...he didn't see it. Neither did anybody else. Do you?"). I just wonder how far Andriacco played out the fallible detective card as the ending left me with the feeling the second solution is also incorrect and will come back to haunt him in a future mystery novel. Something that does not appear unlikely in a series like this, but I could be wrong.

Either way, The English Garden Mystery succeeded with flying colors in capturing the feeling of the characters wandering into an EQ-style novel that fully does justice to the favorite tropes of those two mystery writing cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. If there's anything to nitpick at, it's that perhaps more could have been done with the English garden with its riot of lowers, bronze fountain and statue of a flute-playing Pan to evoke that "Ellery-in-Wonderland" atmosphere of There Was An Old Woman (1943) and The Player on the Other Side (1963), which would have been perfect for a story taking place right after the characters emerged from the pandemic lockdowns. Other than that, The English Garden Mystery is a compelling detective novel that comes highly recommended to every Ellery Queen fan and West 87th Street Irregular. But if you're completely new to series, like me, the characters can make you feel like a stranger among friends.