Top Storey Murder (1931) by Anthony Berkeley

Last year, I ranked Anthony Berkeley among the "Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" on account for going from practically being forgotten at the turn of the century to having his former prestige as an innovative, sometimes subversive mystery writer restored – which in Berkeley's case took a little longer than some of his contemporaries. A restoration process that started inauspiciously with The Roger Sheringham Stories (1993) and The Anthony Berkeley Cox Files: Notes Towards a Bibliography (1993), but the first real headway was made in the early 2000s.

House of Stratus reprinted a big chunk of Berkeley's then obscure, long out-of-print work like the then ultra rare The Layton Court Mystery (1925) and his celebrated masterpiece The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929). They also reprinted the superb Jumping Jenny (1933) and fan favorite to many, The Piccadilly Murder (1929). Funnily enough, the House of Stratus editions become overpriced collector item's not long after they went out-of-print. A small, independent publisher, Langtail Press, tried to revive those reprint, but it was the British Library Crime Classics and Collins Crime Club reissues that marked a more permanent return to print. In 2021, Collins Crime Club even reprinted The Wintringham Mystery (1926/27) that had not seen a reprint since its original serialization/publication nearly a century ago. Not to mention the unearthed short stories that have been turning up in several anthologies and Crippen & Landru's published collection The Avenging Chance and Other Mysteries from Roger Sheringham's Casebook (2004), which had two "enlarged editions" published in 2015 and 2023.

So bringing Berkeley's work back to print and restoring his reputation ("the cleverest of us all") can be called one of the success stories of the reprint renaissance. Somehow, someway, what should have been a regular Roger Sheringham novel decided to shroud itself in obscurity by defying getting reprinted.

Top Storey Murder (1931), alternatively published as Top Story Murder, was among the first to be reprinted by House of Stratus, in 2001, but no new editions since it slipped out-of-print again with used copies being unreasonably priced – dissuaded me from picking it up sooner. That and kind of expected Top Storey Murder to have been part of the British Library Crime Classics series by now. I'm sure Top Storey Murder is going to get a long overdue reprint before the decade is out, but recently lucked across a copy. So let's dig into this often overlooked, seventh title in the Roger Sheringham series.

Berkeley's Top Storey Murder begins with Sheringham meeting Chief Inspector Moresby for a lunch appointment as a way to keep in touch with Scotland Yard ("Scotland Yard called it ‘Mr. Sheringham working the pump-handle'"). However, the telephone cuts short their lunch appointment as Moresby is summoned to the scene of a crime at the top floor flat of Monmouth Mansions in Platt Street. A reclusive spinsters, Miss Adelaide Barnett, who had been found strangled with a rosery in her trashed, ransacked flat. The kitchen window was standing open and a rope, tied to the gas stove, was dangling out of it. Miss Barnett was a peculiar, somewhat hostile woman who garnered "a local reputation as a miser, with a bag of sovereigns sewn up in her mattress." Moresby warns Sheringham this going to be an ordinary case without much of interest to the amateur detective, "no fancy fandangos, like you get in the story-books," but Sheringham decides to come along regardless. And, despite being warned this is going to be a routine case, Sheringham immediately begins to theorize when observing the various clues/red herrings at the scene of the crime.

I think the first five chapters constitutes the best parts of Top Storey Murder pitting the imaginative, theorizing amateur detective against the practical, experienced and well-oiled police apparatus of Scotland Yard – briefly created a proto-police procedural. Moresby has a small army of experts going over the crime scene, which, of course, include the fingerprint man and police photographer. More interestingly is the presence of Inspector Beach, "specialised in this type of crime, burglary in flats," who makes a profile of the scene and checks the points ("there are twenty-two points I've got noted down") against the methods and habits of the career criminals in their filing cabinets. A single name rolls out of this process of elimination. Yes, like the board game Guess Who? Having observed all the clues and red herrings, Sheringham is convinced the murderer is one of the other residents of Monmouth Mansions.

Unfortunately, the police investigations begins to recede into the background as the police begins to search for the burglar-turned-murderer and Sheringham begins to pursue his own line of investigation.Top Storey Murder nearly reverts back to being an ordinary, 1930s whodunit in which a snooty amateur detective tries to best Scotland Yard. I liked Sheringham retreating to the Reading Room of the British Library to order his notes and think over the possibilities. Sheringham interacting with the suspects, sometimes under a false flag, is always fun, but it's the introduction of the victim's estranged niece, Miss Stella Barnett, who adds interest to the middle part and ending. Sheringham becomes more than just a little bit intrigued by the young, defiant woman who refuses to touch a penny of her misery aunt and even takes her on as his new private secretary. Stella takes to job, but simply refuses to play the Dr. Watson to Sheringham's Sherlock Holmes. If anything, Stella sandbags him and his "absurd theories" with predictable results on someone with Sheringham's personality ("the girl's becoming a positive obsession with me").

That helped the sometimes sagging middle portion from bottoming out and carry it to the conclusion, where Sheringham's unmatched talent for fabricating false-solutions got to shine in all its glory. Nothing to daunt Sheringham as he victoriously wiped the egg of his face.

So, while Top Storey Murder is not Berkeley's greatest or most original detective novel, it's still a very entertaining, top-notch Golden Age mystery playing the grandest game in the spirit of The Poisoned Chocolates Case and Leo Bruce's Case for Thee Detectives (1936). Very much worth a reprint and read!

Dead to Rights: "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" (1974) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer," originally appeared in the August, 1974, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Leopold's Way (1985), starts out with a routine case for Captain Leopold and Lieutenant Fletcher – a simple case "without a hint of ghosts or impossibilities." Captain Leopold is ready to go home when a fatal shooting is reported on the 15th floor of the Grant Tower.

Martha Aspeth, a cleaning woman working at the Grant Tower, was shot by her estranged husband, Kurt Aspeth ("he wanted younger ones"). Leopold and Fletcher has plenty of eyewitnesses, "five women who work with her," who all saw it happen. Kurt came up to the 15th floor, asked for Martha and "pulled out his gun and started shooting" the moment he laid eyes on her. He then made his exit through the fire escape. So all they basically have to do is send out an alert, wait for him to be picked up and hand the matter over to the prosecutor. A simple, clear cut and uncomplicated case that turns into an impossible crime over night.

Following morning, Fletches has a good news, bad news situation for Leopold. Good news is that they found they found their suspect. Kurt Aspeth had crashed his car into a bridge abutment, on the Expressway near the Grant Tower building, which killed him instantly. However, according to the evidence, the smashup happened about thirty minutes before the shooting where Kurt was "positively identified as the murderer by five witnesses" – who all knew him personally. I liked how Hoch immediately dismissed the obvious, hackneyed explanations. A discrepancy in the records appears out of the question as the accident report is backed up by the medical report. No error due to daylight-saving time or faulty clocks. Kurt's body was identified by his older brother, Felix, who has a passing, brotherly resemblance, but couldn't pass for his twin brother. Fingerprints back up the identification! Felix believes "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident." 

Leopold and Fletcher are far too grounded and sober minded to take any stock in Felix's claims that "his brother's spirit killed Martha, after the accident," but then what happened during those thirty minutes?

"Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" is one of Hoch's most John Dickson Carr-like impossible crime stories, despite not being a typical impossible crime or traditional locked room mystery. A cross between ghostly phenomenon and bi-location. Hoch brings more than his usual competent craftsmanship to the table in order to explain away this apparent miracle with an inspired solution both imaginative and completely satisfying. There is, perhaps, one coincidence some readers might find a little hard to swallow, but that's that Merrivalean cussedness of all things general for you. However, what I found even more impressive is the overall structure of the story. Hoch took an unfortunate, every day case of spousal murder without a hint of planning or touch of subtlety (i.e. manufactured alibis, locked rooms, etc) and turned it into a Carr-like impossible crime story by introducing an apparent "glitch" in the timeline. It worked. Mike Grost called "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" a "landmark in such time-centered mysteries" in the Chesterton-Carr tradition and I couldn't agree more. If there's ever going to be a Hoch best-of collection, "Captain Leopold and the Ghost-Killer" deserves to be included.

The Devil's Pet Baits: "A Melee of Diamonds" (1972) by Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch's "A Melee of Diamonds," originally published in the April, 1972, issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and collected in Leopold's Way (1985), begins with a crude, everyday crime – a simple smash-and-grab job. A man wielding a silver-headed cane smashes the store window of the Midtown Diamond Exchange to pocket a modest fortune in diamond rings and unset stones, but a patrolling police officer is immediately on the scene. And gets knocked down with the cane. Fortunately, a bystander chases the thief, wrestles him to the ground and hands him over to the police. So case closed, except for one small, all-important, detail: what happened to the diamonds?

The thief, Rudy Hoffman from New York, took $58,000 worth of diamonds from the broken store window before getting apprehended half a block away. From the time Hoffman smashed the store window to the moment he was tackled to the ground, "he was in sight of at least one person every instant until they arrested him." However, Hoffman didn't have a single diamond on him. The police searched him, the street and they "even searched the patrol car he was in after his arrest" without finding a single diamond ring or unset stone. Hoffman isn't talking.

So when Captain Leopold hears a report the following days, he asks to have him brought down "to show you guys how it's done" with similar results. This apparently simple smash-and-grab from a store window is not one of Captain Leopold's finest hours as he's in full fallible detective mode ("this is my night for being wrong"). Even when the missing diamonds and the solution are literally gifted to him on a silver platter.

Captain Leopold pulls an impossible vanishing-act with the diamonds himself, in order to manipulate an accomplice in drawing out the main culprit, but it horribly misfires and, to use his own words, "I was trying to pull off a neat trick, and I got a guy killed" – "I bungled, that's what happened, Fletcher." Captain Leopold got it wrong one more time that night, before he can finally and successfully close the case.

So, while Captain Leopold was stuck in fallible detective mode, I played Mycroft Holmes and deduced the correct solution to the first impossibility. And, what exactly, happened the moment the store window got smashed. A not wholly unoriginal trick complimented by the smash-and-grab setup that allowed me to anticipate the identity of the main culprit. On the other hand, Leopold's trick honestly had me stumped and it's not even half as good or original as the first vanishing-trick. But it served its purpose. So, while not a perfect detective story, "A Melee of Diamonds" stands as another pretty solid, competently-plotted effort from the prolific Hoch enjoyably demonstrating the versatility of the impossible crime story outside the customary locked room and fields of virgin snow. Recommended!

Note for the curious: I also reviewed the short story collection The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) and the Captain Leopold short story "The Oblong Room" (1967).

Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope (2025) by P. Dieudonné

Recently, the small independent Dutch publisher E-Pulp released the twelfth novel in P. Dieudonné's Rotterdam police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en de stille hoop (Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope, 2025), which begins with introducing a kaleidoscopic jumble of plot-threads – apparently unconnected. The opening chapter finds De Klerck arguing with Commissioner De Froideville over a two-year old, still unsolved and open missing persons case.

Frits Kieviet, "a habitual burglar," disappeared two years ago following the unsuccessful burglary of the home of an imminent university lecturer, Professor Rudolphi. The professor reported to the police nothing had been stolen, but rumors reached De Klerck claiming a valuable collection of antique coins was stolen from Professor Rudolphi's house in Ridderkerk. According to the rumors, two more people were involved in the burglary: a now dead call-girl named "NightQueenie" and her then boyfriend, Jules Olijhoek, who supposedly framed Kieviet. And not without consequences. Several dubious looking tough guys came looking for him at his regular bar, after which he disappeared without a trace. Worryingly, it suggests the respectable Professor Rudolphi is "a formidable criminal who wants to prevent his mask from falling at all costs." However, the case is in the hands of another district and De Klerck is not permitted to reopen the case or bother the influential Rudolphi ("...a friend of a friend").

The rumors regarding the burglary and collection of coins emanated from Kieviet's regular pub, 't Zotte Zwaantje, whose owner, Lowie, asks De Klerck's assistance when one of his regulars, Kjell van Boekel, dropped out of sight without a word – even turning his phone off. Inspectors De Klerck and Klaver don't have very long to give this problem their full attention, because next they're confronted with the central puzzle of the story.

A patrolling policeman found a young, soaking wet and dying man with pieces of duct tape still stuck to his face and clothes. The victim turns out to be a student, Casper Stokkentreeff, who recently got in trouble with the police for stalking his ex-girlfriend following a sudden breakup. Why was he held captive and tortured for days? Why didn't the doorbell cameras show him trying to get help? Why did he use his last breath to mumble something about building a bridge or bridge builders? A colleague of De Klerck's remarks that the murders he gets to investigate rarely resemble a simple crossword picture, but tend to be complicated cryptograms. Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope certainly is no exception.

I mentioned in previous reviews how this series built on the formula of the Dutch politieroman as imagined by A.C. Baantjer rather than being another imitation. Such as loosening up the formula to allow more freedom to play around with the plots, which received some much needed plot complexity. So the series not only featured the customary bizarre, multiple murders, but also sported locked room mysteries, dying messages and unbreakable alibis. But also what can be called what-happened mysteries like Rechercheur De Klerck en het duistere web (Inspector De Klerck and the Dark Web, 2022) and Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongewenste dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death, 2023). A non-traditional puzzle in which a jumble of confusing crimes, incidents and people need to be put in the correct order or sequence to create a complete and coherent picture of the truth. Not always easy to do, but Dieudonné pulled it off before (see Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death). Regrettably, I can't say the same for the latest entry in the series.

I know Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope isn't intended as a traditional, fair play whodunit presented as a politieroman, but, even as a what-happened, it would have been nice to have had a shot at it – prevented by some information being dropped relatively late into the story. Important enough information to reduce every attempt preceding it to blindly groping around the dark. Same goes for, what turned out to be, the undecipherable dying message. I gave away my best impression of an armchair oracle trying to come up with a logical interpretation for those last, cryptic gurgled words. Maybe the policeman misheard him, but what sounds like "brug bouwen" (building a bridge)? Je moeder verbouwen (renovating your mom)? Surely, he couldn't have used his last breath to ask the policeman to tell his killer he was going to renovate his mom. So, as you can see, I did some serious work for nothing. That would not have been half as bad had the ending been good, but the plot felt as jumbled after the explanation as before and murderer's identity plus motive was underwhelming. I honestly would have been more impressed had Frits Kieviet pulled out as the off-page, but ever present, murderer. That really bugs me.

This series isn't a collection modern, five-star masterpieces of detective fiction posing as Dutch police procedural, but the quality is admirably maintained throughout the previous novels and why I've been fanboying about it for the past five years. Inspector De Klerck and the Silent Hope completely missed the mark, for me at least. As pleasantly written as the previous novels, but the plot is uncharacteristically messy. That's the drawback for Golden Age detective fans of following a new series, you can't cherry pick the best titles. I'm sure Dieudonné back to his old tricks for the thirteenth De Klerck novels. Fingers crossed it will be titled Rechercheur De Klerck en de dertien katten (Inspector De Klerck and the Thirteen Cats).

Note for the curious: Well, rather a question. I ended the review of Rechercheur De Klerck en de status in moord (Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder, 2024) promising to do “Hit List” ranking the first twelve titles in the series. I know the series is untranslated and not accessible to most readers of this blog, which is why they never generate much discussion. Only exception, for obvious reasons, is the third title, Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020). So... wanted to know if anyone's actually interested for top 12 of this series?

The Black Swan Mystery (1960) by Tetsuya Ayukawa

I pontificated in "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century" on how today's translation wave started when Keigo Higashino's 2011 translation of Yogisha X no kenshin (The Devotion of Suspect X, 2005) became an unexpected, international bestseller opening the door to invite future translation – which the late John Pugmire accepted in 2015. Locked Room International published the first-ever English edition of Yukito Ayatsuji's epochal Jakkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) opening the floodgates to even more translations. And attracting other publishers to the joys of the Japanese shin honkaku mysteries.

Funnily enough, neither The Decagon House Murders nor The Devotion of Suspect X can be labeled as a locked room mystery or impossible crime, but the translation wave has been dominated by locked room novels and impossible crime stories. So the past ten years have been something of a locked room renaissance and the translation wave infused the form with some much needed fresh blood, which helped to revitalize it and even lead to a revival.

However, the locked room mystery is not the end-all of detective fiction, you don't always get that impression from reading this blog, but the impossible crime story is merely my favorite hobby horse – a hobby horse I enjoy riding into oblivion. I love and welcome good, craftily-plotted detective stories in any shape or form and wanted to see what the Japanese detective story can do outside a locked room or field of untrodden snow. This is one of the reasons why I've been so intrigued by their hybrid mysteries, tracked down Seimaru Amagi's Dennō sansō satsujin jiken (Murder On-Line, 1996) and jumped at the opportunity to sample Jun Kurachi's Hoshifuri sansou no satsujin (Murders in the Mountain Lodges Beneath the Shooting Stars, 1996). So was not dismayed at all when it became apparent Pushkin Vertigo was going to diversify their output of honkaku and shin honkaku translations.

This year, they're going to publish Yasuhiko Nishizawa's time-looping, hybrid mystery Nanakai shinda otoko (The Man Who Died Seven Times, 1995), Taku Ashibe's classically-styled whodunit Oomarike satsujin jiken (Murders in the House of Omari, 2021) and two strange novels by horror Youtuber "Uketsu." I'm not sure about Seishi Yokomizo's Kuroneko tei jiken (The Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, 1947), but it appears to be a whodunit without any impossible crimes. Don't worry. I'll be getting my Japanese impossible crime fix through Ayatsuji's Tokeikan no satsujin (The Clock Mansion Murders, 1991), MORI Hiroshi's Warawanai sugakusha (Mathematical Goodbye, 1996) and the various anime-and manga detective series. This move began last November with their publication of Tetsuya Ayukawa's Kuroi hakuchou (The Black Swan Mystery, 1960), translated by Bryan Karetnyk, whom readers will remember from the short story collection The Red Locked Room (2020).

Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery is best summed as a police procedural in the tradition of Seicho Matsumoto's Ten to sen (Points and Lines, 1958), but with the heart, soul and plot of the traditional, fair play detective novel – particularly Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts. Yes, the story largely hinges on the question of alibis, complete with time tables and railway schedules, but it's much more than simply retracing people's movement and breaking down alibis. It's also an excellent and absorbing police procedural/whodunit.

The investigation at the heart of The Black Swan Mystery is an involved one starting with the murder of Gosuke Nishinohata, director of Towa Textiles, whose body was found next to railway tracks near Kuki Station with a bullet in his back. Detective Inspector Sudo and Constable Seki get to take a crack at the case first and they get a lucky break as Nishinohata's body had been thrown from an overpass and landed on a train passing under the Ryodaishi Bridge. So the blood on the bridge and roof of the train gives the police an exact time and place to check everyone's alibis ("my, my, that's awfully precise, Inspector"). There are, of course, enough complications to make this everything but a routine murder investigation. This is a detective story, after all.

Firstly, the owners of the Towa Textiles Company are at "loggerheads" with the trade union who presented them with "a four-point list of demands and called a strike." One of the four demands is freedom of religious expression, because Nishinohata was a follower of the Shaman, a new sect of Shintoism, who tried to push his religion on the workers and that didn't sit well – neither with the workers nor the the Shaman. The Shaman have stranglehold on their followers, figuratively and literally, which is why they're not happy Towa Textiles is willing to give in on that specific demand. It would mean losing thousands of members at once. They employ an ex-secret serviceman, Hanpei Chita, who's job is to dissuade people from leaving the Shaman and considered to be capable of everything ("...even of killing a man"). Secondly, Nishinohata was a known philanderer coming with the usual complications and his position as director gets entangled with the personal lives of the people at the company. His private secretary, Takeshi Haibara, wants to marry the beautiful daughter of one of the directors, Atsuko, but she's in a secret relationship with the vice-chairman of the trade union, Narumi.

So enough to keep Sudo and Seki pleasantly occupied with trying to entangle this complicated knot of relationships, potential motives and those pesky, rock solid alibis, but then more bodies begin to turn up along the way – all curiously connected to the first murder. Sudo and Seki eventually hit a dead end and the top brass decides to assign the case to Inspector Onitsura to give it a second look.

Inspector Onitsura previously appeared in several short stories from The Red Locked Room, translated by Ho-Ling Wong, who described him "Ellery Queen wearing the face of Inspector French" and his short stories/novels are generally regarded as early police procedurals. But they're crammed with original tricks and EQ-style chain of logic/deduction. Tetsuya Ayukawa certainly allowed Onitsura to live up to his reputation in The Black Swan Mystery. Onitsura is as logical and methodical as French, but neither is above making the occasional mistake or overlooking a small detail. Once they got hold of something, they follow it to its logical conclusion. Whether there's a murderer waiting at the end of that specific trail or not. There's something really comfy about following Onitsura on those leisure train rides pass the small stations along the less frequent traveled lines. Or, to quote the story itself, "writer of children's stories with a fantastical mindset might have imagined that the train were a tortoise and that he were riding on its back towards the Palace of the Dragon King" ("...the inspector himself was too much of a realist to have such fairy tales in his mind"). So the first and second-half of The Black Swan Mystery already form an excellent, slightly classically-styled, police procedural published during the rise of the social school in Japanese crime fiction. The story definitely has a strong flavoring of the social school with a strike going on in the background and addressing certain issues of post-war Japan, but the overall plot and uncluttered, clear solution possesses all the ingenuity of the Golden Age detective stories of the West.

A solution that naturally turn on the question of alibis and opportunity, but those alibis don't come into play until Onitsura has identified the murderer with roughly a quarter of the story left to go, only to be stonewalled by a pair of cast-iron alibis – "unassailable from every angle." But the "very perfection" of those alibis makes him only more determined to tear them down. And tearing them down, he does! The tricks behind the two alibis honestly are something you would expect from a honkaku mystery novel rather than a police procedural with obvious ties to the Seicho Matsumoto's social school of crime fiction. Bush, Crofts and Queen could have hardly done better! That fact is also depressing as hell. Even when Japan moved away from the traditional, plot-oriented detective novels of Seishi Yokomizo and Akimitsu Takagi to make way for the social school, they continued to produce first-class detective fiction. Sure, it was often disguised as historical fiction or police procedurals, but they were still there. When the West abandoned the traditional detective stories of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, the genre descended into a dark age.

So, to cut long story short, Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Black Swan Mystery comes heartily recommended as one of those rare mysteries that fans of the classic detective story and modern crime novel can enjoy, but the former have to keep in mind it's a little different from what most have come to expect from a Japanese detective novel. A little different, but just as good.

Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder (2024) by P. Dieudonné

During the summer, E-Pulp published the tenth novel in P. Dieudonné's Rotterdam police series, Rechercheur De Klerck en de sluier van de dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Veil of Death, 2024), which is a double-sized politieroman to mark the series' first milestone – reason why its publication was delayed several months. So didn't expect them to keep to the customary schedule of two novels a year, but the eleventh title in the series was recently published. And it's better than the previous, double-sized De Klerck mystery!

Rechercheur De Klerck en de status in moord (Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder, 2024) begins with a request to Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver, of the Rotterdam police, to assist the harbor police investigate a suspicious death. One that looks an awfully lot like murder.

In the Veerhaven, a luxurious sailing yacht has been deliberately sunk and divers found the body of a woman floating inside, but the doors where sealed shut from the outside to keep her from escaping – turning the yacht into an inescapable death trap. De Klerck and Klaver quickly find out that the victim, Ismene Duetz, gave people around her plenty of reason to be glad someone gave her a one-way trip to the bottom of the river. Ismene was recently deserted by her long-suffering, browbeaten and now ex-husband, Ivo Lambriex, which is why she was temporarily living on her yacht. That ties-in with her favorite hobby: brown-nosing the Dutch aristocracy ("she absolutely adored the nobility...").

Ismene is friends with Lady Noëlle de Beauchateau, daughter of Lord Maximiliaan de Beauchateau, who is engaged to Baron van Feyesslink tot Elzeveld. Before her engagement to the Baron, Noëlle was dating the owner of a struggling diving supply store, Peter Versantvoort. Ismene got wind of Peter's financial troubles and told the Lord about. Similarly warned Noëlle about potential future advances from her brother, IJsbrand ("blue blood marries blue blood"). So more than enough to keep to the two inspectors busy for some time, but further complications arise when a member of the aristocracy is shot and a third, very surprising death. None of these murders follows the pattern expected from a Baantjer-style politieroman, which in this case added to the fun.

That third, final death really took me by surprise as it made me second guess my deductions, because it looked like a daring attempt to present De Klerck and Klaver with an easy solution to close the case – which didn't turn out to be the case. But an interesting turn of events. And was on the right track all along!

Dieudonné returned with Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder to previous novels like Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020), Rechercheur De Klerck en moord in scène (Inspector De Klerck and Murder on the Scene, 2021) and Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongewenste dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Unwanted Death, 2023) by presenting an old-school detective novel as a contemporary politieroman a la Baantjer. All very fairly clued, too. There are a couple of important pieces of information given late into the story, but, if you spotted the clues and hints, they shouldn't come like bolt from the blue. So what more can I say about this early Sinterklaas present that hasn't already been said in previous reviews? This series continues to be a rare treat giving me a double shot of nostalgia and something to sooth that detective itch in my own language! In that regard, Inspector De Klerck and the Status in Murder is another success story and a strong, solid entry in the series. I look forward to the next one and plan to do another “Hit List” blog-post ranking the first dozen De Klerck novels when it gets published.

A note for the curious: I wonder how many readers heard these words in their head when the murderer was revealed (SPOILER/ROT13), “qebzzryf, qebzzryf ra abt rraf qebzzryf, qvr pybja ra qvr npebonng!” :)

Deathwatch: "The Oblong Room" (1967) by Edward D. Hoch

Earlier this month, I reviewed Edward D. Hoch's short story collection The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023), gathering fifteen stories in the Captain Leopold series from the 1981-2000 period, which comes with a detailed introduction and series retrospective – written by the celebrated French anthologist, Roland Lacourbe. The introduction directed my attention to a particular short story in the series.

"The Oblong Room," originally published in the July, 1967, issue of The Saint Magazine, is together with "The Leopold Locked Room" (1971) the "most frequently republished Hoch stories," but, somehow, always confused "The Oblong Room" with "The Problem of the Octagon Room" (1981). So was a little surprise to read Lacourbe describing "The Oblong Room" focusing "less on who killed the victim than why" and "the motive, once discovered, will be one of the strangest in detective fiction." That doesn't sound like a locked room mystery at all! Sure enough, it turns out to be the exact opposite of a locked room mystery.

Captain Leopold and Sergeant Fletcher have an apparently open-and-shut case on their hands when they're called to the scene of a murder at the men's dorm of the local university. Ralph Rollings, a sophomore, is found stabbed to death in his dorm room and the obvious suspect is his roommate, Tom McBern, who refuses to talk and demands a lawyer – while an obvious motive begins to emerge ("they probably had the same girl or something"). There are, however, some baffling details complicating, what should have been, an open-and-shut case. When the bloody scene was discovered, Ralph had been dead for the better part of a day and the only thing Tom is prepared to admit is staying with the body in the locked dorm room for the past twenty-two hours. Captain Leopold and Sergeant Fletcher also have to take the drugs found in their room into consideration and the testimonies from other students about their strange relationship and the sway Ralph held over people ("...a power you wouldn’t believe any twenty-year-old capable of").

So the murder is not about whodunit and how the murder was pulled off, but what happened in that dorm room and why. A what-and-why-dun-it. Hoch obviously used the Captain Leopold series to experiment as "The Oblong Room" would not have worked as well in the Simon Ark or Dr. Sam Hawthorne series. Hoch's experiment here was not without consequences.

"The Oblong Room" was rejected by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine before The Saint Magazine bought and published it. Apparently, the solution has certain elements that "scared off some editors" at the time, but "The Oblong Room" in the end won Hoch an Edgar Award. Deservedly so? Yes... and no.

I think "The Oblong Room" is a good crime story, certainly for the time, but not one of Hoch's best short stories for two reasons. Firstly, the story and those controversial elements feel like a product of its time and, as far as sordid crimes go, relatively tame by today's standards – both real and fictitious. Secondly, the story needed to be longer for the ending to be truly effective. Captain Leopold noted himself that the problem with this case is that didn't get to meet the two principle players until the damage was already done. Well, that can in this case just as well be applied to the story and reader. If you're going to write a what-and-why-dun-it, you need to do more character work than was done here. Other than that another competent piece of work from Hoch.

After this short story and the previous short story collection, it's time for something slightly more traditionally plotted. Stay tuned!

The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) by Edward D. Hoch

The Killer Everyone Knew and Other Captain Leopold Stories (2023) is the thirteenth volume of Edward D. Hoch's fiction, published by Crippen & Landru, collecting fifteen short stories from his series of police procedurals featuring one of his most enduring creations, Captain Jules Leopold – who appeared in over a hundred short stories. A not inconsiderable chunk of Hoch's output counting nearly a thousand short stories covering more than a dozen different series and standalone stories.

Captain Leopold is the head of the Violent Crimes Squad of Monroe, a fictitious town somewhere in Connecticut, who's a normal, competent and levelheaded policeman. So he's basically a modern-day Inspector French. Being one of Hoch's rare conventional characters doesn't mean his caseload is always normal or everyday. I know Captain Leopold from the odd anthologized short story which tended to be locked room mysteries and impossible crime stories. I suppose the known of these stories "The Leopold Locked Room" (1971) in which Captain Leopold is framed for the murder of his ex-wife, but not to be overlooked is "Captain Leopold and the Impossible Murder" (1976) staging a locked room slaying in the middle of a rush hour traffic jam.

There is, of course, more to the Captain Leopold series than an excellent impossible crime story or locked room mystery every now and then. Roland Lacourbe illustrated this in his excellent introduction and detailed overview of the series, "The Best of Captain Leopold," which opens The Killer Everyone Knew. A insightful, non-spoiler introduction for those not overly familiar with the series or are new to it and a refresher course for those who might not have encountered Captain Leopold for while. After all, the last Captain Leopold story, "Leopold Undercover" (2007), was published seventeen years ago and The Killer Everyone Knew is the first Captain Leopold collection since Leopold's Way (1985). So this publication was long overdue. Even longer than that second Ben Snow collection.

Lastly, before delving into this collection, the stories in The Killer Everyone Knew originally appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from 1981 to 2000. Yes, this is a shoddy attempt to prevent another unnecessary long and bloated SSC review. So with that out of the way...

The first story, "The Woman Without a Past" (1981), confronts Captain Leopold with the double murder of an unmarried couple, Judy Thomas and Carl Forrester, who were gunned down on their own doorstep when returning home from a birthday dinner. She has a past going back only ten months before it goes completely blank and he has forty-eight cans of ether in the closet. So who was the killer after, Judy or Carl? A good and intriguing setup, but, in the end, not much of a mystery as the culprit is glaringly obvious in spite of wearing the garb of the least-likely-suspect. I think the next story would have made a better opener to this otherwise excellent collection.

"Captain Leopold Beats the Machine" (1983) is a neat little impossible poisoning mystery. Tommy Rusto is a two-bit criminal implicated in the fatal car bombing of Vice-Mayor Mark Prior, but now that his trial is coming up, he's ready to talk and name names. So the D.A. asks Captain Leopold to borrow their interrogation room and for him to be present as a witness, which is when things take a turn for the worst as Rusto asks for a cup of coffee – brought to him by Captain Leopold. Rusto takes a sip of the coffee, mutters something about the taste of the coffee ("this coffee tastes...") and drops dead from cyanide poisoning. The coffee came from the vending machine of the police squad, which is taken apart and closely examined, but is proven to be clean and not tampered with. So who poisoned the stool pigeon and how? Well, those are, admittedly, not terrible difficult questions to answer and it's strange Leopold is never considered as a suspect. Nevertheless, it's a good, timely example of the detective story exploring new possibilities technology can bring to the table (beside a cyanide laced coffee) and loved the clue that identified the murderer. To quote Leopold, "this is truly the age of the machine."

The third story, "Finding Joe Finch" (1984), begins with the announcement of Captain Leopold's engagement to Molly Calendar, a defense lawyer, who appeared in the previous story as Rusto's legal representative. A strain is placed on the engagement following a deadly payroll robbery at the Greenways factory. The primary suspects is one of the factory workers, Joe Finch, who's nowhere to be found. Not to mention that he's the brother-in-law of Lieutenant Fletcher. This causes some problems at home ("...you're all the same, aren't you?"). So more of a police procedural with troubled cops than a proper detective story, but the clueing is fair and the factory setting well realized. And added something to everything from the characters and storytelling to the plot.

I already reviewed "The Murder in Room 1010" (1987) back in June alongside Hoch's "The Theft of Cinderella's Slipper" (1987) and "The Theft of Leopold's Badge" (1991), but it's a small gem of an impossible crime story.

"The Crime in Heaven" (1988) boosts one of Hoch's most creative and original setups when a woman comes to Captain Leopold to report a murder far, far outside of his jurisdiction. Mrs. Roberts has been communicating with the spirit of her grandfather, dead for half a century, through the medium Madame Vane and her spirit guide, Grey Elk ("they're often Indians, you know") – whom she accuses of murdering her dead grandfather! During their last séance, Mrs. Roberts heard the voice of Grey Elk screaming at her grandfather and someone saying, "put down that gun," before a gunshot rang out. Nothing was heard after the shot and Madame Vane refused any more seances. Something weird or unusual happened, but where do you even begin to investigate when "the murder victim was a man who's already been dead for fifty-five years"? Captain Leopold's colleague, Sergeant Connie Trent, plays a big role in unraveling this criminal scheme gone horribly awry. Simply a great story with an original approach to presenting and picking apart a plot.

The title story of this collection, "The Killer Everyone Knew" (1989), begins when Captain Leopold is visited by a criminal psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Frees, who works with convicted murderers. Dr. Frees regresses them through hypnosis to the moment of the murder and he's convinced one of his patients is innocent. Five years ago, Ralph Simmons was identified by several witnesses as the man "who'd taken Laurie Mae Nelson out to her car in the parking lot and strangled her." So he was arrested, put on trial and sentenced to twenty years to life ("...still protesting his innocence"), but now Dr. Frees claims his hypnotic sessions uncovered Simmons was "nowhere near the scene of the crime that night." Captain Leopold is more than a little skeptical, but promises to look over the file. And the case notes don't look too promising. But, curiously, it turns out the witnesses have begun to die. This story is a bit of downer as it obviously leans more to the serious crime story/police procedural, but how Leopold uses a chain-of-knowledge, rather than evidence, to identify the murderer is not bad. That and it was interesting how Hoch decided to tackle the shopworn premise of a man innocently convicted of murder.

If you think "The Killer Everyone Knew" is a bit depressing, you haven't read "Captain Leopold's Birthday" (1990). Captain Leopold is not looking forward to his coming birthday as the department's mandatory retirement policy is "now only twelve short months away." On top of that, Leopold learns that an ex-colleague from the Arson Squad, Marty Doyle, died from a heart attack a year into his early retirement. Something that has unexpected consequences when one of the Doyles neighbors is shot to death with a target pistol and Leopold has to investigate a murder involving people he knows personally. A dark, gloomy and somewhat depressing cop drama/police procedural, but Hoch (SPOILER/ROT13) uvatrq gur jubyr guvat ba n pyrireyl uvqqra, grpu-onfrq nyvov hfvat gur pncgnva uvzfrys nf n jvgarff. So I didn't hate it, nor loved it, but definitely liked how it reads like a miniature version of a Roger Ormerod novel with its dead ex-cop and use of a target pistol as murder weapon.

The cover image of this collection comes from the next story, "The Retired Magician" (1991), which plays out over the course of several months. Captain Leopold learns that the famous stage magician, Rex Furcula, retired to Monroe and bought a house complete with a small carriage house to store his magic collection and memorabilia – nothing much was heard of him for several years. Two years later, Furcula sister is murdered when she caught a burglar in the carriage house and killer is killed himself during his getaway. So an open and shut case. Over the course of several months, Leopold and Molly become acquainted with Furcula and his wife. Leopold begins to like the Furcula's, but suspicion begins to sneak in when he learns about a one-million dollar life insurance policy. Just like in a magic act, "nothing is ever quite what it seems." I enjoyed the deliberate vagueness, but clued, of the setup punctuated by a new wrinkle on a classic idea. A solid Hoch short story!

"Puzzle in a Smoke Filled Room" (1991) is another story with a premise as intriguing as it's original. The men of Fire Company 5 respond to a house fire and find a woman in pajamas on the doorstep begging to save her husband who went to bed early, but, when entering the burning, smoke filled bedroom, they hear the crack of an exploding cartridge. Firefighter Randy Dwyer is fatally hit in the chest by bullet. The victim of a bizarre, but not an unheard-of, accident in which "the intense heat of the fire had detonated the powder charge in several pistol cartridges stored in the homeowner's bedroom." However, the bullet that was removed from the body has lands and grooves on its sides proving "it had been fired from a gun barrel." Captain Leopold and his team go from a freak accident to a quasi-impossible murder. So it's unfortunate the solution doesn't hold up. I can overlook Leopold not immediately grasping (SPOILER/ROT13) gur fvtavsvpnapr bs na rkvg jbhaq gung fubhyqa'g or gurer, ohg jung nobhg gur cngubybtvfg? Fubhyqa'g ur, bs nyy crbcyr, abgvpr gur obql unf bayl bar ragel jbhaq naq bar rkvg jbhaq, ohg fgvyy qht n ohyyrg bhg bs gur ivpgvz'f purfg? Juvyr gur frpbaq ohyyrg jnf sverq guebhtu gur svefg ohyyrg jbhaq, vg qvqa'g sbyybj gur genpx bs gur svefg ohyyrg be gurl jbhyq unir pbyyvqrq. Naq gur cngubybtvfg jbhyq unir qht gjb fyhtf bhg bs gur obql. So loved how the story was presented, but its resolution left me unconvinced. Only just realized the method is basically a poor, simplified reworking of a rather elaborate trick from another and better Captain Leopold story.

"The Summer of Our Discontent" (1992) is not so much a detective story as it's an important character-arc. Captain Leopold has the long-dreaded retirement talk with Chief Ringold and agrees to retire by the end of the month. Everyone assumed Lieutenant Fletcher is going to be promoted to captain and appointed commander of the Violent Crimes Squad, but Chief Ringold tells him Lieutenant George Vivian, of the Burglary Squad, is picked as his successor – which comes as a smack in their face. Things get worse when one of Vivian's men, Sergeant Patrick O'Mera, is found shot dead in his patrol car with evidence suggesting bribery and corruption. The excellent and fitting motive behind the murder should have made this story a worthy retirement case for Captain Leopold, but everything felt mired in needless cop drama. So the story becomes more about how this murder is going to ruin Vivian's promotion and hand it back to Fletcher rather than allowing Leopold to tidy up his last case, before officially handing over the reigns to Fletcher. Why not do the same thing, except (ROT13) Ivivna trgf cebzbgrq gb pncgnva naq pbzznaqre bs gur Ohetynel Fdhnq? Gung jnl, gur zbgvir fgvyy jbexf jvgubhg gur fbncl qenzn gung pbhyq bayl raq bar jnl.

"Leopold at Rest" (1993) is a minor, but pleasantly surprising, story showing Fletcher in Leopold's role as head of the Violent Crimes Squad handling everyday routine cases like an attempted murder. Charlie McGregor was shot by his wife's lover, Tod Baxter, who's released after his brother backed the half-million dollar bail. Another story that's pleasantly mysterious about the direction of the story, but the ending delivered. Not a very happy ending, but unexpectedly good after the previous two stories. This series is strong on unexpected, original motives and cleverly-hidden criminal schemes. So even the stories leaning heavily in the direction of the dark, grim police procedural and character-driven crime fiction feel more substantial, because they have a plot to stand on.

"Leopold Lends a Hand" (1995) is another good one bringing together the classically-styled detective story and the modern police procedural. Captain Fletcher is short staffed, "more cases than the Violent Crime Squad can handle at the moment," which is why he asked Leopold to help out with some routine questioning of witnesses at the scene of a murder. Construction workers discovered the body of Vladimir Petrov, a Russian businessman, when they returned to work on his million dollar, partially finished condominium – shot twice in the chest. Petrov possessed a couple of antique religious icon, dating back to sixth or seventh century, which are worth a small fortune and considered to be potential motive. Only then Fletcher is shot and seriously wounded. Suddenly, Leopold is back on the job as "acting head of the Violent Crimes division," when another complication rears it ugly head. The woman who appraised one of the icons, Rachel Dean, is shot and killed behind the locked door and barred windows of her private office. She lived long enough to leave behind a dying message! A detective story with a dying message inside a locked room comes with certain expectations, regarding the solution, but Hoch delivers the goods. More importantly, it came with that jolt of surprise I remember from my first encounters with Agatha Christie. I need to nitpick a little here and point out the central idea behind the locked room-trick had been tried before, one or two times, but Hoch arguably employed it to greater effect.

I didn't like the next story, "The Mystery That Wouldn't Stay Solved" (1997), which brings a true crime writer to the retired Leopold to discuss one of his old cases. Nine years ago, Alex Clemmins received the death penalty for the car bombing that killed his wife and their two young children. Now that the execution is less than a week away, the case is getting renewed attention in the media with rumors swirling around about new evidence. Leopold begins to suspect "the evidence that convicted him might be flawed." The previous stories set the precedent that even the stories leaning more towards the police procedurals and crime stories aren't without plot virtues, but that's not the case here. If "Leopold Helps a Hand" shows what the traditional, but modernized, detective story could have been in the nineties, "The Mystery That Wouldn't Stay Solved" rubs the tripe we got instead in your face.

"The Phantom Lover" (1999) is another fairly minor, unusually structured story beginning as a missing person's case. Stanley Falkner is fairly well-known in the city, "a local Realtor who dabbled in politics," who had a very public, headline making brawl with Lynn at a restaurant ("she'd jabbed him in the neck with a salad fork..."). So she becomes a person of interest when her husband goes missing and is found shortly thereafter dead in a gravel pit. Surprisingly, Lynn comes clean halfway through and confesses she conspired with her lover, Gavin Stark, to dispose her husband – which gets her indicted on two counts ("second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder"). However, the so-called phantom lover is nowhere to be found and when she recants her confession, the case against her threatens to collapse. Lynn has a rock solid alibi for the time Gavin killed Stanley. So, unless the D.A. can produce Lynn's lover, there's "no way the D.A. can prove a conspiracy." Captain Fletcher has his work cut out as Leopold is "following this case closely in the papers." Like I said, the structure is unusual, for a detective story, but the truth behind the phantom lover left me unimpressed.

The final story, "The Emerald Expert" (2000), ends the collection on a high note. Leopold and Molly open their home to a French gemologist, Henri Scarlotti, who has come to the United States to testify as an expert witness on behalf of the defense in the Jaspar case. Jeff Shields and Beryl Constantine, his girlfriend, stand trial for the murdering and robbing of a jewelry salesman, Alex Jaspar. Both were caught in New York when they tried to dispose of the stolen emeralds, or so the prosecution claims, but they claim to be innocent. Scarlotti can apparently prove the emerald they tried to sell in New York were mined in a different location than Jaspar's stolen emeralds ("...a small sample from the gem's surface is measured for oxygen isotopes"). This provides the story with fascinating sidelight on emeralds and emerald mining, before the home of the Leopolds becomes a crime scene. Scarlotti was shot and killed in their home! The solution is pretty solid with a surprising killer and, once again, an original motive. So a fine and fitting story to close out this overall excellent collection of Captain Leopold stories.

Lacourbe writes in the introduction that the stories have "verve and imagination" in their variation with "the weirdness of many of the situations" standing "in sharp contrast to the seeming banality of the cases themselves." Something all the stories in this collection can attest to, whether they're good or not, but it's also impressive when you hold the stories up to Hoch's other series. Lacourbe notes that Leopold is one of Hoch's most grounded series-character. Leopold is not a gunslinger from the Wild West (Ben Snow), a thief-for-hire (Nick Velvet), a locked room expert (Dr. Hawthorne) or an immortal detective (Simon Ark). Just a normal, everyday homicide cop who relies as much on his experience as he does on his intelligence and Hoch genuinely tried to create miniature versions of the then contemporary, character-driven crime drama's and police procedurals – complete with their dark, gritty tone and bleak endings. So not everyone is going to like, what Mike Grost dubbed, "The Gloomy Tales," but I admired Hoch craftily giving a classical twist to most of these bleak, gritty modern-day police procedurals. And with only four less than stellar stories, The Killer Everyone Knew ensured Leopold's Way is on its way to the top of the pile. Simply a must-read for Hoch fans!

A note for the curious: if you ever wondered what the mostly untranslated, Dutch police procedurals/detective stories by M.P.O. Books/"Anne van Doorn" are like, The Killer Everyone Knew comes pretty close to the short stories collected in De bergen die geen vergetelheid kennen en andere mysteries (The Mountains That Do Not Forget and Other Mysteries, 2018) and Meer mysteries voor Robbie Corbijn (More Mysteries for Robbie Corbijn, 2021). Just throwing that out as a reminder there's still some untranslated gold over here.

His Burial Too (1973) by Catherine Aird

Kinn Hamilton McIntosh is a British mystery novelist, known as "Catherine Aird," who started her writing career in the sixties with The Religious Body (1966) and published her most recent novel, Constable Country (2023), when she was 93 – bringing the tally to twenty-nine published novels and short story collections. All except the non-series, standalone novel A Most Contagious Game (1967) featured her series-characters, Inspector C.D. Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby of the fictitious Calleshire County.

Catherine Aird was a personal favorite of Tom and Enid Schantz, of the erstwhile Rue Morgue Press, who decided to break expand their own rules to include Aird's non-vintage, police procedural-like mystery novels. Rue Morgue Press reprinted the then already forgotten A Most Contagious Game and reissued eight Sloan novels, before closing down in 2016. I first learned of Aird through the Rue Morgue Press and an endorsement from the Schantz is good enough to try one out. Unfortunately, I somehow picked the worst possible title.

The Stately Home Murder (1969), originally published as The Complete Steel, sounded promising enough at the time. A modern rendition of the classical, Golden Age-style country house mystery, but ended up trotting out cliches (SPOILER/ROT13: obqvrf va gur yvoenel naq gur ohgyre qvq vg) that were presented as clever, funny and subversive takes on the genre. That left enough of a bad taste that I never returned to Aird and Sloan. Not even the fat carrot that has been dangling in front of me for years wasn't enticing enough to return... until now.

The fifth title in the Calleshire series, His Burial Too (1973), is one of the few, notable locked room mysteries to be published during the 1970s and shortly highlighted in "The Moderns" section of Robert Adey's introduction to Locked Room Murders (1991) – only mentioning that it "incorporated an impossible killing." Worryingly, the only person who's beating the drum for His Burial Too is Jim, of The Invisible Event, who included the book in his "A Locked Room Library – One Hundred Recommended Books" ("...one of the best methods of achieving this effect yet employed"). A red flag, if there ever was one, but His Burial Too came out of the first round of nominations for the "New Locked Room Library." So finally moved it to the top of the pile to judge it for myself.

His Burial Too begins after one of the hottest days in the history of the shire with the discovery that a prominent member of the Calleshires village of Cleet has gone missing the previous evening.

Richard Tindall, of Struthers & Tindall, was supposed to be in bed that morning, but his daughter, Fenella, found the still made bed empty. Tindall failed to show up at the office and his car is later discovered in the unlocked garage. Not a sign of the man himself anywhere. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby travel down to the village, but their missing person's inquiry soon turns into a murder investigation when construction workers discover his crushed body inside the church tower. Tindall was flattened by a huge, marble statue ("a weeping widow and ten children all mourning the father"), known as the Fitton Bequest, toppled from its plinth a good few feet high and smashed to pieces – covering the floor with "a vast quantity of smashed marble." This wreckage not only ended up killing Tindall, but the broken pieces blocked both doors from the inside ("there must be all of half a ton of marble up against the back of it"). So getting inside to secure the crime scene and excavate Tindall from the debris resembles a small scale disaster relief operation taking several men and chapters. A great way to hammer down the impossibility of the situation! Once they manage to get inside and the body out, it becomes apparent Tindall had been deliberately killed. And how the murderer managed to stage this locked room scenery is not the only complication facing Calleshire's finest.

That "rather odd firm," Struthers & Tindall, is a research and development company specialized in doing research or analyses for companies without their own research departments/laboratories. Sometimes these are hush-hush jobs involving security, dishonest employees or industrial espionage. Tindall is not the only one or only thing that disappeared. A very important report, Mellemetic File, is nowhere to be found. Nor can they find the chairman of United Mellemetics, Sir Digby Wellow, who's known as "one of the country's more colourful industrialists" ("and vocal..."). A receipt is found on the body for pair of diamond and emerald clips, presumably a birthday present for his daughter, but they've gone missing too. Gordon Cranswick, of Cranswick (Processing) Limited, comes forward claiming Tindall was ready to sell the firm to him. However, it's the locked room problem that gives the plot its weight.

First of all, while His Burial Too is a genuine locked room mystery, it's closer in vein to Dorothy L. Sayers than John Dickson Carr. From the literary chapter headings and backdrop (The Nine Tailors, 1934) to the how being far more interesting than the who-and why. The locked room-trick is ingeniously contrived, original even, but not entirely convinced it could have done as described. Perhaps better suited as one of those immensely satisfying, false-solutions that fall apart under closer scrutiny (ROT13: gur gevpx fgevxrf nf qrcraqvat zber ba yhpx guna fpvrapr naq gvzvat va beqre gb xabpx bire frireny gbaf bs zneoyr). Despite not being wholly convincing, I still enjoyed it and appreciated Aird made real work of the locked room in both presentation and solution. It would have been disappointing if the statue had been pulled down with a rope that had been retrieved through the narrow slit window, crack of gap. So a little surprising His Burial Too failed to leave much of an impression in our niche corner as at the time it must have been like coming across a cool, tall glass of water in a scorching wasteland. Edward D. Hoch and John Sladek were the only two who made serious contributions to the locked room mystery during the 1970s, but failed to secure a place on the 1981 and 2007 ranking of best impossible crime novels – collectively known today as the "Locked Room Library." At least it got nominated this time around. Simply as a locked room mystery, it deserves the opportunity.

When it comes to the overall story, I can keep it short and simple. His Burial Too should have been either edited down to an excellent short story and potential anthology mainstay or expanded into a novel-length mystery in order to flesh out the underdeveloped characters, setting, motive and sub-plots. The latter option would have resulted in a gentler, kinder precursor of the more gritty, neo-traditional detective novels and locked room mysteries Roger Ormerod would go on to write in the years and decades ahead. The problem of the blocked doors reminded me a somewhat of the locked room problem from Ormerod's When the Old Man Died (1991) where shattered, undisturbed glass on the floor showed nobody opened or closed the door after the murder. It sure is an unusual way to lock and seal an open, unlock room and not something that has been fully explored, which is another reason why the trick feels satisfying. At least I know why Jim likes it so much. And why he finds it convincing.

So not a full throated recommendation, but, if you demand some ingenuity and work going into your impossible crime fiction, His Burial Too is worth a try. It's a short enough novel that you can breeze through in two hours.

Gray Tones: The Case of the Elevator Slaying (2017) by R.L. Akers

R.L. Akers is a self-styled, self-published storyteller who authored several science-fiction novels and short story collections blending science-fiction with thriller elements, but, more importantly, Akers wrote a short series of detective novellas – published between 2017 and 2018. A series covering half a dozen novellas blending classically-styled plots with the contemporary police procedural and cop dramas.

Gray Tones: The Case of the Elevator Slaying (2017) is the first title introducing the series protagonist, Grayson "Gray" Gaynes, who's a NYPD detective third grade and typical, troubled cop of today's crime fiction. More on that in a moment. The Case of the Elevator Slaying is one of 571 works to come out of the first round of nominations for the "New Locked Room Library" organized by The Detection Collection blog. However, The Case of the Elevator Slaying is not a locked room mystery or impossible crime story. No idea why or who nominated it. Even more surprising, I ended up being more intrigued by Gaynes and his backstory than the plot itself.

The setting of the story is the Harkley Building, "an aging low-rise apartment building," which becomes the scene of a gruesome, double murder when the elderly couple of Ellis and Kathryn Howell get beaten to death inside the elevator – now painted red with their blood. Fortunately, the murderer is easily identified as their next door neighbor, Barton Chan, who was seen exiting the elevator covered in blood. What's more, the murders were caught on the elevator's security camera. So an uncomplicated, clear cut case and exactly what Gray needed on his first day back on the job ("combination medical leave and bereavement"). Gray wanted "to get some sense of motive" to understand why Chan snapped and sticks around the apartment building to continue digging. That... and another reason.

This is where the story splits in two. For me, anyway. On the one hand, the setup is fascinating and assumed the impossibility wasn't a double murder in closed and locked elevator, but proving Chan's innocence, which didn't turn out to be the case. The solution to the murders and why, or rather how, Chan snapped is pulpy at best and incredibly hokey at worst (SPOILER/ROT13: V pna'g oryvrir vg'f abg ulcabgvfz!). And the culprit is not difficult to spot. On the other hand, Aker planted his clues fairly and the underpinning motive is original. By the end, I was more intrigued how Gray was going to tackle his next case. I'm normally not too keen on the troubled cop trope, but if you're going to do and stack the odds against him, you might as well make a thorough job of it. So that's enough to warrant a return to the series, but have two even better reasons.

Firstly, The Case of the Elevator Slaying pleasantly reminded me of the detective fiction of Dutch mystery writer M.P.O. Books (a.k.a. "Anne van Doorn"), e.g. "Het lijk dat aan de wandel ging" ("The Corpse That Went For a Walk," 2019) and Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023). Second, the reviews of the next three, or so, novellas sound positively intriguing with a potential modern-day impossible crime/how-was-it-done classic. Stephen Pierce praised Gray Matter: The Case of the Autonomous Assassination (2018) as rivaling "some Golden Age novels in how it forces you to accept an unbelievable narrative—just trade the local ghost for a homicidal AI" and the To Solve a Mystery blog called it "a good reminder that mysteries utilizing technology aren't impossible." So, at the very least, this series is going to contribute to that future addendum to "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century."