Crash Dive

"Yes... it's a puzzle to know just where to begin."

- Major Williams (Lynton Blow's The "Moth" Murder, 1931)

Originally, the plan for this blog-post was to be a cross-blog tag team review with "JJ," who blogs over at The Invisible Event, but he emailed me last Saturday saying he was bowing out, because he had never "hated every single aspect of a book" before - including the author. He simply refused to waste anymore time on the book.

So what was he reading, you ask? Death on the Mississippi (1989) by the late Richard Forrest, which is an impossible crime novel about a houseboat that vanishes from a closely watched stretch of river. And, as a contrast, I was going to review Death Through the Looking Glass (1978), which concerns the brief and inexplicable disappearance of the wreck of a crashed airplane.

Luckily, I fared better with my pick than the one JJ tried to battle through and it turned out to be surprisingly consistent. That's not something I can say about all of Forrest's locked room novels.

Death Through the Looking Glass is the third entry in a series of ten books about Lyon and Bea Wentworth, who first appeared in A Child's Garden of Death (1975) and were last seen in Death at King Arthur's Court (2005), but it was also the author's second impossible crime novel – even though that aspect of the plot was barely brought up. Surprising, I know. But the angle of the vanishing plane-wreck was barely given any consideration.

The story opens on Lyon's birthday, who's now in his mid-thirties and approaching an early midlife crisis, but at least he got some nifty birthday presents: the complete works of Dashiell Hammett, a six-foot doll based on one of the characters from his children's stories and a new wicker basket for his hot-air balloon. He got the last one from his wife and she also insisted he stopped getting them involved in dangerous murder cases, but during the first flight in the new balloon he personally witnesses the beginning of another one.

A low-flying aircraft, "a garishly painted Piper," approached from the east, "directly out of the sun," which Lyon recognizes as the plane of Tom Giles, a long-ago classmate and real-estate lawyer, but the rush of childhood memories are disturbed when he sees "a plume of black smoke curling" from the craft – after which it plunges in the waters below. However, a search of the supposed crash site, pointed out by Lyon, failed to find any sign of wreckage. Or even a simple oil slick.

The wreck of the airplane has simply disappeared, but the situation becomes even more inexplicable when Lyon receives a phone-call from Giles!

Giles tells Lyon he has good reasons to believe someone is attempting to kill him and asks his old friend to come and see him at his lakeside cottage, but when he arrives the place is completely deserted and there a signs of foul play: the phone line has been cut and there's a suspicious stain next to an overturned chair. On the following morning, Lyon awakes to the news that the plane-wreck has been found with Giles inside it! A bullet in the head and the purse of woman by his side, which belongs to a certain Carol Dodgson.

After this, the story "normalizes" and turns into a regular whodunit: the official police, Captain Norbert of the State Police, favor the wife of the victim, Karen, and her pilot-lover, Garry Middleton. Lyon sees more in the Giles' membership in a tontine, in which the last surviving member makes five million on a hundred thousand dollar investment. There are some colorful characters part of this tontine scheme such as Sal Esposito, an Italian-American, who owns a string of adult-movie shops and massage parlors but, privately, he's a complete weeb. He even has a Japanese houseman. An equally colorful personality is Reverend Dr. Toranga Blossom, leader of a doomsday cult, who believe "the world will die in 1982" in "a multitude of brilliant blossoms" - i.e. atomic warfare. So they can use every penny they can get to prepare by buying abandoned mines and provisions.

Luckily, any person storylines from the regular characters were kept at a bare minimum, because there was red flag in the first chapters of the book. Lyon was silently approaching his early midlife crisis when the eighteen-year-old daughter of a friend began to show interest in him, but that plot-thread mercifully fizzled out. It had the potential to become a total cringe-fest. So the characterization could have been far worse.

As far as the plot is concerned, it is (as I said before) the most consistent detective novel I've read by Forrest. Usually, he has a good (locked room) ideas buried in an uneven, sometimes padded narratives and this has me convinced he should've written his impossible crimes as short stories. It might not have made the same kind of money as a series of full-length novels, but a short story collection of locked room mysteries might have been better for his reputation within in genre in the long run.

How good was the impossible situation in this one? Well, I think the best aspect of this plot-thread was how well it tied-in with Lyon's hobby as a balloonist. His eye-witness account of the crash was a key element of the trick, but the problem is that the nature of the trick gives the entire game away. Once you know how it was done, you know by who it was done. Because the trick fits one of the characters like a glove. I guess that's why the clues were thinly spread around in this surprisingly short novel, but the method for the vanishing plane-wreck is very guessable and from that point out you can figure out everything else.

Yes, Death Through the Looking Glass is one of Forrest's most consistent detective novels, but also one that's very easily solved. Even without any significant clueing.

So, while my overall experience was somewhat better than JJ, I fully acknowledge Forrest was not one of the top-tier mystery novelists from the post-GAD era and some of his better (locked room) ideas were probably better served had they been written down as short stories or novellas. And this relatively short novel shows that in his case less was more and improved the overall quality of the story and plot.

Well, thus far this lukewarm blog-post.

Kingdom Come

"On a lonely sword he leaned,

Like Arthur on Excalibur."
- G.K. Chesterton (The Ballad of the White Horse, 1911) 

Recently, I reviewed A Child's Garden of Death (1975) by Richard Forrest, which marked the debut of his husband-and-wife detective team, Lyon and Bea Wentworth, as well as the first one to feature an impossible crime – of which there are five in this ten-book series. Some of them have very alluring sounding premises (e.g. inexplicable vanishing of an airplane and a disappearing houseboat).

So, naturally, I felt attracted to the series and A Child's Garden of Death, in spite of its imperfections, deserves praise for attempting to bridge the gap between detective stories from the Golden Age and those from the post-World War II era. In any case, the book warranted further investigation and almost immediately decided on which one would be next in line: the last one from the series, Death at King Arthur's Court (2005), which was published posthumously.

Inferring from the dated plot-thread about the fax machine, I strongly suspect the manuscript was initially rejected by his publisher and spent the next decade as drawer stuffing.

Nevertheless, the summary of the plot was promising a story with a solid locked room problem, one with "a medieval twist," involving a hooded figure wielding a broadsword and the shadow of suspicion falling on Lyon – who could end up on death row. So how I could possibly resist? But let's start at the beginning.

Lyon is an author of children's literature and created the Wobblies, "a pair of benign monsters," while his wife, Bea, is an "unflappable state senator." One whose rising star is starting to get noticed across state lines. They live in an eighteenth century house, called Nutmeg Hill, which stands in the Connecticut town of Murphysville, but the small, deceivingly peaceful town has a homicide rate that competes with that of Cabot Cove and Midsomer County. Usually, they find themselves involved in these local murder cases.

During their first recorded case, Lyon and Bea were drawn into an official police investigation by a close friend, Police-Chief Rocco Herbert, but in their final outing as detectives they find a problem in their own driveway – inurned inside a completely sealed, armor-plated RV!

Warren Morgan, a professor at Middleburg University, has been receiving death threats from "a bunch of disgruntled college dropouts," who refer to themselves as the Brotherhood of Beelzebub, which went as far placing "a hundred grand bounty on Morgan." So the professor went full A-Team on an old RV and turned the vehicle into "a rolling fortress." The front doors had been strengthened with interior braces, the windows were replaced with "the special safety glass utilized on armored cars" and could be covered steel shutters. A steel shield had been welded under the chassis and a giant air-conditioning unit was sunken into the roof, requiring the combined strength of "four or five very strong guys," which has an air-filtration system built into it – making it impossible to gas him through the air vents. Finally, the only door has a combination lock and there are only two people with the right combination: Morgan and Lyon. 

The final result is a vehicle with "all the protection of an army tank" and "the interior comforts of hedonist's house trailer," which was parked for extra security on the driveway of the Wentworth home. However, every effort to protect himself proved to be wasted money and energy: someone penetrated a seemingly impregnable fortress and butchered the professor with his own broadsword. He used the sword as a prop in one of courses in Arthurian legends.   

Around the same time as the murder, Lyon found himself in the nearby woods, dazed and confused, but he also feared for his life: a hooded figure, in a robe, wielding a medieval-looking sword was pursuing him with the clear intention of separating his head from his shoulders. Strangely, the figure of his executioner "disappeared into the darkness as quickly as it had appeared."

When Lyon emerged from the woods, hunched, bloody and dragging a long sword across the grass, he tells a waiting Rocco Herbert that something had happened to him, but he was "not sure what." However, Captain Norbert of the State Police suspects Lyon of murder. After all, Lyon was covered in blood, carried a broadsword and knew the combination of the lock on the door. So you would expect that, from here on out, the plot would center on exonerating Lyon, but here is where the book began to flip-flop – shifting the focus of the story into a different direction.

Lyon avoids immediate arrest and the next couple of chapters have him recounting the events from the day and evening, which introduces a number of potential suspects.

First of all, there are two feuding literature professors from Middleburg University and Margon's half-brother and sister, twins, who are under his financial control, but there’s also a redheaded stripper from Boston and mother of Morgan's son – who wants to secure a future for their child. This gave the narrative an entirely different tone and the story never returned to the one set forth in its opening chapter, in which Lyon was attacked by the sword-wielding figure. It turned the book from a dark persecution story into a more lighthearted whodunit in less than two chapters.

Actually, the opening of the book and the chapters recounting what happened on the day preceding the murder recalled some of the Jonathan Creek episodes from the 1990s (e.g. Danse Macabre, 1998).

After these chapters, the State Police receives a letter, written in red ink, which claimed responsibility for the murder ("Satan has been gloriously revenged") and Lyon is let off the hook. Once more, this changed the tone and direction of the story: there are a number of additional murders, one by sniper fire, and the reader learns of a person who has designs on Bea. First by stabbing or shooting her in public and eventually by planting a car bomb. On top of that, Lyon and Rocco have to deal with the slightly unhinged personality behind the threatening letters, which involved the plot-thread about the fax machine, but this was basically a side distraction and an excuse to introduce some thriller-ish material – such as tossing around a hand grenade. I actually liked that fun little scene, but there's no way they could've pulled that off in less than four seconds.

Anyway, this moves a great chunk of the second half of the book into the territory of the modern thriller and crime novels, which was reflected in the poor and disappointing conclusion of the book. The murderer was both obvious and slightly mad. So don't expect too much from the who-and why part of the plot.

There is, however, one aspect of the plot I loved: the explanation for the locked room murder. If you want something different in a locked room mystery, you'll find it in this part of the plot. The solution wonderfully uses such aspects as the weight of the armored vehicle and some, eh, external factors. Forrest excellently clued and foreshadowed how the trick was pulled off, which he subtly spelled out to the reader in the opening chapters, but you've to be very alert and perceptive to put one and one together. Sure, the idea behind the locked room trick is simpler than its execution, but that does not take away from the fact that Forrest found a fairly original way to enter and leave a sealed environment.

So, yeah, Death at King Arthur's Court has a strong opening, a shaky, uneven middle section and a disappointing ending, but with a good and solid impossible crime plot. I guess I can only recommend this one to locked room enthusiasts. Other wise, you can safely skip this one.

Well, I'll try to find something better and more classical for the next blog-post.

Disinter the Past

"Down at the bottom of that crack were bones, a jumble of old gray bones. The remains of a human skeleton, complete with grinning skull."

- The Nameless Detective (Bill Pronzini's Bones, 1985)

For some strange, indefinable reason, I acquired somewhat of a reputation as an unabashed fanboy of locked room mysteries and impossible crime stories, which I mentioned once or twice here, but I used to have a different fascination – stories about long-forgotten murders or recently unearthed skeletons.

During my early days, I was intrigued by the idea of old, unsolved crimes or a pile of earth-caked bones becoming the incarnate past to haunt the people who were involved in the case a lifetime ago. This is probably why I enjoyed Agatha Christie's Elephants Can Remember (1972) more than most.

So imagine my excitement when I discovered Bones (1985) by Bill Pronzini. The plot of the book dealt with the dodgy suicide of a pulp writer, who allegedly shot himself inside a locked room, which was followed by a local earthquake that uncovered a jumble of old bones. A brace of long-forgotten crimes stretching back decades into the past and one of them was a clever, well-executed impossible murder. It was an absolute treat!

The reason for bringing this up is that I found a locked room novel that, in many ways, is comparable to the plot of Pronzini's Bones.

A Child's Garden of Death (1975) is the first of ten novels about Lyon and Bea Wentworth, written by the late Richard Forrest over a thirty year period, of which five can be qualified as impossible crime stories and several seem to have very original premises – such as a vanishing airplane (Death Through the Looking Glass, 1978) and the disappearance of a houseboat (Death On the Mississippi, 1989). However, the locked room is only a minor part of the overall plot in this series opener and it is tucked away in the final quarter of the book.

What drives the plot is the uncovering of three buried skeletons, nestled together in a makeshift grave, who were evidently murdered: clobbered to death with something very heavy as "each skull is filled with fractures." Two of three skeletons were adults, a man and a woman, but the third one, a small skeleton, belonged to a child of about eight years of age – who was found clutching a "mottled and decomposed doll." Chief Rocco Herbert, of the Murphysville Police, is tasked with figuring out what happened at that desolate spot over thirty years ago, but small town politics immediately rears its ugly head. Rocco's brother-in-law, Captain Norbert of the State Police, wants take over the case from the local police, but Rocco sees this as an opportunity: he can retire from the force and run for town clerk "if this thing is handled properly." So he turns to his best friend, Lyon, to help him out with identifying the remains and finding their killer.

The first half of the book consists of two things: one of them is establishing the identity of the murdered family, which they accomplished when they drag a nearby lake and find an old house trailer. This makes for a nice diving-scene as Lyon peddles through the submerged vehicle and finds that, considering the circumstances, "the trailer's interior was in remarkable conditions." It's littered with silent witnesses whispering about the past lives of those three skeletons: a growth-covered dollhouse, rusted silverware, two sets of dishes, a water-corroded toolbox and a bookshelf filled with rotting books. I really the imagery of this particular scene and is what put Lyon on the trail of the murderer. A trail leading straight to a factory of airplane engines and their role in World War II.

Secondly, the story is very definitely an introduction to the primary characters: Lyon is presented to the reader as a "writer of children's fantasy," who created The Wobblies, which are described as "a cross between Gothic gargoyle and yeti," but were gentle and benign creatures. He uses the royalties of these books to slowly renovate the home. Bea is a local politician, a state senator, who was "becoming a political power in the state," but she also has hearing problem. She occasionally screams her lines in all caps. However, they have a genuine tragedy in the background of their life: their only child, a small girl, was killed in a hit-and-run and this fuels Lyon's investigation.

To cope with the lost of his daughter, Lyon picked up an interesting hobby that plays a minor part in the story: he has become a balloonist and often takes to the air.

Well, this part of the investigation and the fleshing out of the series characters is padded with some thriller-material, which comes in the guise of several attempts on the lives of both Lyon and Rocco. Some of these attempts were very close calls and one of them actually results in a casualty. These desperate attempts on the part of the murderer are not only because they're getting awfully close, but also the stubbornness of Lyon. On several occasions, everyone thought the whole matter was cleared up, but Lyon refused to settle for an easy answer. This eventually leads to a murder, disguised as a suicide, inside a locked office-room.

One of the people who came up during the investigation died shortly after a physical altercation, but every piece of evidence seems to indicate this person took his own life: the office-room was locked from the inside and the door had to be busted open after a shot was heard. The gun was found on the body and a message on the recording machine sounds like a suicide note. But, once again, Lyon refuses to settle for an easy answer and comes up with a rather clever explanation streaked with some original ideas, which, sadly, proved to be wrong. Granted, it was a bit gimmicky, but still good and even today came across as a novel idea. The part of the locked was a good idea and surprised the idea was not expended upon by other locked room specialists.

Anyway, the actual solution for the impossibility was pretty routine and unimpressive. I've seen variations of this shop-worn trick too often and the excellent, but false, solution should have been matched with an equally good and original explanation. Or they should have been switched around. I also wished the murderer had been less obvious.

In any case, I found A Child's Garden of Death as interesting as a mystery novel as it was delightfully unusual and admire the attempt at bridging the gap between the detective stories from the Golden Age and those from the post-World War II era. It slipped, here and there, but, overall, I was very pleased with the result. If more modern crime novelists had build upon the genre's rich history, instead of rejecting it, I probably would've been less of a fundamental classicist.

It Takes Your Breath Away

"The situation is becoming an impossible one."

- Professor Moriarty ("The Final Problem," collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894)

The name of Richard Forrest has been hovering in my peripheral vision for years as a writer who participated in that beloved sub-category of the detective genre, locked room mysteries and impossible crimes, but seem to have been unsuccessful in securing ever-lasting fame in this niche corner. Paul Halter's locked room novels appear to have been more well known, before they were even being translated, than the Lyon and Bea Wentworth mysteries by Richard Forrest, but is that justified? After all, Herbert Resnicow's reputation as a locked room specialist stills lays in shameful neglect.

The Death at Yew Corner (1981) is the fifth in the series of books starring Lyon, author of novels for children, and his wife Bea, a former senator, to whom murder and crime are pass times forced upon them by circumstances. In their fifth outing, circumstances that'll be leading them to murder are whirling around The Murphysville Convalescent Home, situated in rural Connecticut, where rivaling interests of union groups resulted in a full-blown strike and perhaps a very preventable death – a consequence of the understaffing of the home.

Fabian "Faby" Bunting is an old curmudgeon with a long-standing friendship with Bea, who was going to the home to meet her and suspects there's more to Bunting's death than simply a nurse leaving her unattended in the hot tub. The reader has been privy of the moment the unknown murderer snatched Bunting away and why she had to be killed: she saw too much through her opera glasses when peering out of the window in the sun-room. What she saw was the kidnapping of a labor organizer, Marty Rustman, which are the beginning of a strew of bizarre murders that would not look out of place in the Midsomer Murders. One of the victims is buried under several tons of earth and rocks with a stolen dirt truck, which, I think, actually happened more than once in Midsomer.

Before I continue, I have to point out The Death at Yew Corner isn't as heavy on politics as you might assume thus far. There are some comments, here and there, about minimum wages and Bea longing to reclaim "her" old seat in the senate, but it's mainly decoration – idem ditto for the strike outside of the home. The only (real) politics are the shenanigans of the divided union members, who impressed me as 1920s-style mobsters with a permit. You're apparently lucky if you get slapped across the face with brass knuckles, but Marty Rustman was shot and dumped in a shallow grave. And for this part of the plot, I suspect Forrest (rightfully) thought he could improve on Clayton Rawson's abysmal No Coffin for the Corpse (1942). I think the "dead-man-rising"-gambit was the best handled aspect of the plot and an infinitely better played out than by Rawson, a professional magician, but I think Forrest missed out on a better killer with a good, double-edged motive.

Oh, and I'm absolutely, one-hundred percent sure this part was inspired by Rawson's locked room novel, because Forrest worked an attempted murder in the plot by locking someone up in a sealed coffin – which is the exact opposite of a corpse without a coffin. That makes sense, right?

Speaking of locked rooms: there's one tucked away in the final portion of the story and the scene is set by none other than the prospective victim, who raised the security around her own home as a preventive measure. There are even guards and a dog. However, they couldn't prevent the murderer from getting to their client and they had to take the door apart with a hammer and chisel, but the solution reveals a patchwork of shopworn tricks strung together. But, still, it somehow works in combination with the secured premise, because it explains why someone would go through all that trouble in order to get to the victim – even if it reveals that there’s nothing new or inventive to it.

That basically sums up The Death at Yew Corner: a light, passable and sometimes entertaining detective novel, but not a must-read for aficionados of Golden Age-styled mysteries or impossible crime stories. Did Forrest wrote any locked room mysteries of note? I'd like to know.