The Foggy Past: C.M.B. vol. 11-12 by Motohiro Katou

The first story from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 11, "Phaistos Disc," returns to the two part, two chapter format in which Mau Sugal, the black market broker, invites Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to her antique shop in Santorini, Greece – one of a dozen shops she has around the world. Sugal promised Shinra to show him parts of her collection of historical artifacts, but, when they arrive at the shop, there's a man waiting for them.

Bier Brust, of Europol, is "the head of the department that deals with stolen artifacts" and, sort of, plays the Jirokichi Sebastian to Sugal's Kaito KID. She just calls him a stalker. Brust is very surprised to see Shinra, holder of the C.M.B. rings, in the company of Sugal, but Shinra is even more surprise to spots "a first class artifact that's been undiscovered until now" among Sugal's inventory. A stamp from the Phaistos Disc! Sugal tells them the stamp has already been sold to Pan Sirius, younger, more outgoing brother of shipping magnate and family patriarch, Andreas Sirius. A family currently in turmoil as Andreas' mistress, Themis Treille, was nearly killed when her boat exploded and whispered rumors say his wife, Illias, tried to kill his mistress. So when Shinra and company accompany Sugal on her delivery of the stamp, they become embroiled in a murder investigation when Illias is shot aboard the family's private yacht with Pan standing over her with a gun. Pan claims he didn't shot her and Andreas was visiting Themis in a nearby hospital. What really happened?

Shinra compares the case to the failed attempts at deciphering the titular disc, because "quite possibly, this incident may not be solvable for the same reason." Shinra, of course, reveals the murderer in the second and concluding chapter showing the theme of the story and plan of the murderer dovetail, but take away historical trappings, the murderer is nothing more than a legendary, hall of fame idiot gambling (ROT13) ba n qnatrebhf oyhss – redeemed only by the motive. So, storywise, this is not a bad story at all with some fascinating sidelines on out-of-place artifacts, hoaxes, decoding ancient tablets and historical background details, but, plot-wise, not the best or terribly convincing.

The second, one-chapter story is "HATSUGAMA Case" and begins Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara from Motohiro's Q.E.D. series making a brief cameo. They dropped by Shinra to wish him a happy New Year, but find he's out and wonder what he's doing. Shinra was asked by Tatsuki's grandfather to join a gathering with a few of his old high school friends for hatsugama, a tea ceremony to ring in the new year, because the friend hosting the ceremony, Kurmatsu, is a terrible snob and bragger. So he wanted Shinra to come along to outsmart him when it comes to tea ceremony trivia. Shinra is far more interested in the other items, but during the ceremony the tea cups disappears from its box and replaced with another item. So who replaced the cup, how and why? This story ended up reminding me of Isaac Asimov's Black Widower short stories with its fairly minor problem and explanation that hinge on a piece of trivia. However, if you happen to be aware of it, there's one scene that will probably bring it back to mind and help you spot the culprit and method. So, yes, a minor story, but a good and fun one.

The third and last, one-chapter story closing out this volume is "Marujime Neko" and is one of those human interest, or heart-shaped puzzles, Motohiro has done so expertly in the Q.E.D. series, but this might be the first one to work in this series. Shinra acts here like a cross between a spoiled brat and an extortionist, but not without a good reason. 

An elderly, recently widowed man, Hiraya Hideyoshi, who had all kind of bad things happen ever since his wife passed away. A stone was thrown throw a window, fire crackers thrown into the garden and eventually an accident happened. Shinra is prepared to help out with the case, but demands Hiraya Hideyoshi's statue called Marujime Neko, "said to be an early prototype of the Maneki Neko," better known as the Beckoning Cat. However, the Marujime Neko was a gift he bought for his wife on their honeymoon and "full of memories," but Shinra refuses to take no for an answer. So the series of strange incidents is only a small side issue, but with a clever piece of visual clueing and reasoning. What makes this story is why Shinra appeared to be so cruel towards an elderly, grieving widower by demanding such a sentimental item as payment. More than meets the eye indeed! Another relatively minor, but very good, story to end this volume on.

"Clay Seal" is the first, one-chapter, story opening C.M.B. vol. 12 and digs a little bit into Shinra's backstory. Shinra was raised by the previous holders of the C.M.B. rings when his mother passed away, acting as his three stepfathers, one of whom Ray Black – a professor as brilliant as he's reckless. Ray Black was called in as an expert by the Louvre when it was discovered clay tablets had someone been stolen from ancient Babylonian pots sealed shut for millennia. Somehow, "the clay seals that had not been opened for thousands of years were bypassed" and tablets stolen. And, to make the situation even more impossible, the seals were marked with a cylindrical stamp rolled over the clay seal. Only kings and other royalty possessed such stamps, which means once it's opened it can never be resealed to its original state. The main interest of the story naturally comes from Shinra and Black's backstory, but enjoyed the archaeological conundrum that reunited them and Shinra's solution how the tablets were taken from the sealed jars is very clever. A solid opener to this volume!

The second story, "An Old Woman and a Monkey," is another one-chapter story, but arguably the best short from these two volumes and a personal favorite. Shinra and Tatsuki are helping out Hinogure Toki, an elderly, sickly and frankly dying woman, clean out and tidying her home. During their work, Shinra and Tatsuki become concerned for the elderly woman, but not for health reasons. They overhear her grandson, Hayao, arguing with his wife Chika over his inheritance ("if you don't get any inheritance from her, I'm divorcing you”). They're not the only ones concerned over her money. Tatsuki eavesdrops on a heart to heart talk between Toki and her accountant, Umiyama Takeshi, who has embezzled her money and appears to be unable to return it ("...sicker I get, the less forgiving I will be... so please, keep that in mind"). So they advise her to lock her bedroom door during the night and Tatsuki even keeps guards in the hallway, which comes with a great floor plan of the situation. When they fail to wake her, they have call the police to have locked door broken open. Hinogure Toki is lying dead in bed, poisoned, while her pet baboon Hihimaru tries to wake her up. The door, and windows, are securely locked from the inside and Toki had not eaten during dinner. There was poison found in the water jug, but neither the jug nor the glass had her fingerprints on it. Hihimaru had nothing to do with either the method of poisoning or locked room-trick.

Like I said, this is a short, one-chapter story and the plot is not terribly complex, but sometimes, there's something to be said for straight forward simplicity – particularly when it has a glimmer of originality. The solutions to the who, why and especially how aren't cliched, or routine, offering a new, simple way to have someone end up poisoned behind a locked door and still make it appear like an impossible crime. A surprisingly tricky thing to do, but Katou did it effortlessly here as in "The Detective Novelist Murder Case" from Q.E.D. vol. 33. I also liked how the story ended with Shinra adopting Hihimaru after finding him being sad in Toki's empty bedroom. Yes, C.M.B. can be a whole lot weirder at times than its sibling series Q.E.D. Nonetheless, this story is (IMO) a series highlight!

C.M.B. vol. 12 ends ends with a longer, two-chapter story, "The Actress Sees a Ghost," which is much more of a psychological thriller with supernatural overtones than a detective story. The story takes place in Hong Kong where a man, Wang Qing Yun, fell to his death from rooftop into a garbage container. So his body was not found until collection day, three days later. A death filed as a suicide, however, the victim used to be the boyfriend of a rising actress, Zhang Qian Lian, who has been slowly unraveling and ruining her career in the process. For some time, she's being haunted by the unsettling, watery ghost of a man and the haunting provides the story with some of its best panels. For example, the ghost manifests itself at a fish market through a wall of fish aquariums! Shinra and Tatsuki become involved, but the hook of the story how "the person who successfully forced the real culprit to confess was an unexpected one." So a very well done story in that regard, but have nothing much else to say about it.

So, on a whole, vol. 12 is overall better than vol. 11, but both volumes show Motohiro Katou is starting to get the hang of these one-chapter stories as they get better, and better, from "HATSUGAMA Case" and "Marujime Neko" to "Clay Seal" – culminating with "An Old Woman and a Monkey." Look forward to the next two volumes!

Tim MacNab Seeks a Story (1937) by Marten Toonder

The concept of "lost media" is something of an obsession on parts of the internet and touched upon the subject myself, "Top 10 Works of Detective Fiction That Have Been Lost to History," covering everything from Jacques Futrelle going down with the Titanic to the lost collaboration between John Dickson Carr and J.B. Priestley – between a maddening number of unpublished, presumably destroyed manuscripts. Most famously Hake Talbot's third Rogan Kincaid novel The Affair of the Half-Witness and Joseph Commings' four novel-length Senator Brooks U. Banner mysteries. So the detective story, especially the classics, has had its fair share of lost media as well as number of recently recovered novels and short stories from the likes of Christianna Brand, E.C.R. Lorac and Anthony Berkeley.

There has even been a recovered, previously unpublished, detective novel here in the Netherlands from the hands of one of the most celebrated Dutch comic book artists, Marten Toonder.

Marten Toonder created the beloved characters Tom Poes and Olivier B. Bommel, Tom Puss and Oliver B. Bumble in English, who appeared in the long-running Tom Poes series. A series praised for enriching the Dutch language with new words and playful phrases, which reportedly made Toonder's work tricky to translate into different languages, als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel. Toonder died, aged 93, in 2005. During his centenary, seven years later, it was revealed a loose-leaf, typescript manuscript was discovered in the Toonder archive of a never before published detective novel, Tim MacNab zoekt copy (Tim MacNab Seeks a Story) – originally written in 1937. It's unclear why the manuscript was shelved, but finally appeared in a limited print run of 1500 copies when publisher De Bezige Bij distributed the manuscript, "curiosum in facsimile," as a 2013 New Year's gift. Tim MacNab Seeks a Story received a proper publication in 2017, under the slightly modernized title Tim MacNab zoekt kopij, which came with a foreword from Dutch thriller author Tomas Ross ("a unique gem") and afterword from Toonder's grandson, Irwin M. Toonder.

I had heard of it before and jotted it down for future reference, but forgot all about it until receiving the gift wrapped facsimile edition last December. If you want to get the real feeling of reading a lost detective story, the facsimile of a typescript complete with handwriting corrections gets that job done. On the downside, the first three chapters have a lot of faded, hard to read pages of text, which fortunately improved to make it as readable as intended. How does it stack up as a detective story written during the Golden Age's golden window, the years 1935 to 1937? Let's dive in and find out!

Tim MacNab Seeks a Story is narrated by Captain Sixma, of the S.S. Wega, ferrying a cargo of "characters" from Rotterdam to Montevideo and Buenos Aires. There's the jovial, roving reporter from Chicago, Tim MacNab, who takes on the duties of shipboard sleuth. Otto Braun, a German stockbroker, gladly taking on the role of murderable murderee. Further more, there are William Jones, a fat cat from London, Juanita Lloret, a dancer from Vienna, Father Dominicus, a missionary from South Africa, Dr. Johan van der Steen, a sea sick botanist, Mrs. Wijers, a Dutch invalided widow and her private nurse, Tilly van Doorne. Finally, Gustav and Lotte Herchel from Zurich, Switzerland. So a nice, neatly packed cast of characters for an intimate shipboard mystery with Otto Braun setting himself as prospective victim. Not long after lifting anchor, Braun is shot through the head in his cabin while making notes in his diary.

Tim MacNab rises to the occasion, positioning himself as the detective, but Captain Sixma is a responsible, sensible down-to-earth Dutchman – who sees trouble ahead. Reasoning "a person who has committed one murder can very easily commit a second one." That fatal failure would be his responsibility as captain. Regrettably, Captain Sixma's prediction comes true when a second person is killed leaving MacNab and Captain Sixma to chase a murderer who left two bodies behind and littered the ship with clues and red herrings. Like the torn pages from a diary, a scrap of old newspaper, a rosary bead, a whiff of perfume, a dying message and an astonishing lack of alibis.

This all makes for a well-paced, entertaining enough whodunit and I'm sure you can breeze through the 2017 edition (i.e. finished product) within an hour or two, which is Tim MacNab Seeks a Story greatest strength as a story and greatest weakness as a detective story. Technically, the plot holds together well enough, but the plot is very prosaic and unimaginative. When the murderer was revealed, my response was, "oh, that fits, I guess." I would have been more impressed had it been written in 1927, because its brief experiments with false-solutions and a dying message would have made it somewhat prescient en route to the 1930s. What's more, once everything was revealed, all I could see was a better alternative solution than the one presented.

I still very much enjoyed reading Tim MacNab Seeks a Story, but that doesn't take away it's pretty basic and average for a 1930s detective novel. I genuinely wish it had been better than it turned out to be, because all my attempts to find another good, classic Dutch detective author like Cor Docter or Ton Vervoort has been less than inspiring. So, historically, Tim MacNab Seeks a Story is an interesting curiosity for sure, but not very satisfying as a detective story originally written in 1937. The reader has been warned.

Anyone interested in me re-reviewing Docter's trio of Daan Vissering mysteries or do you want to stubbornly go on, until finding something really good again? Let me know below.

Note for the curious: in case your curious about that better, more satisfying alternative solution (MILD SPOILERS/ROT13): fb gur svefg ivpgvz jnf gur hacyrnfnag Bggb Oenha jub jnf abg nobir n fcbg oynpxznvy, juvyr gur frpbaq ivpgvz vf Thfgni Urepury. Gung bcraf gur qbbe gb gur rgreany gevnatyr. Ybggr Urepury unf n frperg ybire naq vf orvat oynpxznvyrq ol Oenha. Fb gurl qrpvqr gb xvyy gjb oveqf jvgu bar fgbar ol xvyyvat obgu ure uhfonaq naq gurve oynpxznvyre qhevat gur gevc, juvpu jbhyq serr gurz hc va zber guna bar jnl. Lbh pna onfvpnyyl cvpx rirelbar nf ure frperg ybire/pb-zheqrere qrcraqvat jung xvaq bs fhecevfr lbh jnag gb tb sbe. Vqrnyyl, vg fubhyq or rvgure gur pncgnva (haeryvnoyr aneengbe) be gur ercbegre uvzfrys, ohg bar bs gur perj zrzoref jub'f nyjnlf va gur onpxtebhaq jbhyq nyfb jbex. Lrf, vg'f abg terng cybggvat vs lbh pna fybg nal ahzore bs punenpgref vagb gur ebyr bs zheqrere, ohg urer vg pbhyq unir jbexrq.

After typing that out, I realized Tim MacNab Seeks a Story is Deck Dorval's Een jacht vaart uit (A Yacht Sets Sail, 1947) all over again. I'll try to pick something substantially better next. I have something on the pile that'll do the trick. A locked room-trick!

Time Wants a Skeleton: C.M.B. vol. 9-10 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 9 opens with a two-part, two chapter story, "The Sun and a Folklore," which brings Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to Machu Picchu, Peru, accompanied by their mutual frenemy, Mau Sugal – a black market broker and professional nuisance. Sugal explains to a skeptical Shinra a piece of Inca gold has turned up ("most of the Inca gold was melted down by the Spanish into gold ingots"). It happened during a curious incident two weeks ago.

Professor Polaiyu discovered in the university archives an uncatalogued quipu ("a necklace that conveys a message using the number of knots") with knots and markings he had never seen before. After studying the quipu, Professor Polaiyu became convinced it conveyed a coded map of the underground tunnels leading "from the Temple of Sunlight to the Golden City." So he organized a small expedition into the tunnel system with a local guide, Hulio, but only the young guide came back out clutching a piece of Inca gold. Hulio's story is that he lost the professor when the batteries of his flashlight died, but refuses to tell where he found the gold. Not long after getting involved in the case, the body of the professor is found near the exit along with his digital camera with blurry pictures on it. And the first part ends with an unambiguous murder.

I wouldn't call "The Sun and a Folklore" a typical, traditional whodunit, more an adventures mystery of myth and folklore, but thought the problem of batteries presented an inspired piece of clueing – strengthened by its conclusion. A slightly unexpected and unusual conclusion with the last two panels adding a touch of sad tragedy to the whole case. So, in many ways, a typical Katou story and a good one at that!

The second story, "The Metamorphosis," is a one-chapter short taking place at Meiyuu Private High School's library. Shinra and Tatsuki are in the library, helping out with chores, when they spot a picture hanging above the door. A strange picture depicting "a beautiful butterfly with a grotesque looking caterpillar," which turns out to be relatively valuable drawing by the 17th century entomologist and scientific illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian. So, of course, they let it hang above the door and, as to be expected, it disappeared. The circumstances under which it disappeared makes it something of an impossible crime. There was only one student present in the library and the picture vanished during a 30 minute window, during which nobody could have taken the picture out of its frame without being noticed by the student ("the windows, they were all locked"). So, if the student is innocent, who stole the picture and how? Shinra's solution is as ingenious as it's impractical and liable to misfire, but Katou was obviously aware of the problem and worked the difficulty of pulling off this trick into the solution. I allow it! :)

The third and last one-chapter story from this volume is "Abortive Migration" and brings Shinra and Tatsuki to the island of Okinawa to photograph marine wildlife. They have two diving instructors to along with them, Tsuruoka Nobuaki and his wife Miki, but the two have a badly disguised argument and it later turns out to be related to his first wife, Keiko – who died in a tragic diving accident. Tsuruoka and Keiko had been diving when encountering a lot of dead fish and eventually a humpback whale. But he "lost track of her beneath the shadow of the whale." Keiko's body would not be found until a week later. Tsuruoka Nobuaki has ever since lived under a cloud of suspicion and now it's coming to a head with his second wife. I guess you can pigeonhole this story in the psychological crime slot, but personally found a dull and weak story to close out this otherwise excellent volume.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 10 has four, one-chapter stories starting with a personal favorite, "Sixty Million Years," in which a brother-and-sister team of archaeologists, Hera and Joyce Colbert, ask Shinra to come out to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Hera and Joyce unearthed, what can only be called, an impossible fossil, "human and dinosaur fossils, together in the same strata." But there they are, "together with the dinosaur fossil placed above the human fossil" ("this is clearly impossible"). Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, is called upon to authenticate and, if possible, explain what they found. It's to be regretted Katou only gave the story a single chapter instead of two, or three, chapters to explore the possibility of faking such a fossil and some of the fringe theories ("...an advanced ancient civilization existed"), which were only mentioned passing. However, Shinra's explanation places this story in the same category as Ross Rocklynne's "Time Wants a Skeleton" (1941) and James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars (1977) without treading into science-fiction or hybrid mystery territory. "Sixty Million Years" simply is an impressive piece of 19th century-style naturalist impossible crime fiction reimagined in the 21st century with a 65 million year old conundrum. To say I liked this story would be the understatement of the Holocene Epoch!

Unfortunately, the next two, one-chapter stories, "The Nail" and "Summer Holiday at the World End," were both very minor and disappointing stories. "The Nail" begins with a series of good, old-fashioned creepy chain mails, "if you don't make this picture into your background wallpaper, you will receive grave misfortunes," going round Shinra and Tatsuki's school. The place in the picture is easily identified and this leads to hit-and-run incident where the culprits claims the victim was pushed in front of his car. I thought this story was uncharacteristically uninspired as Katou simply retreaded the core idea from "Abortive Migration" (SPOILER/ROT13: gur fhccbfrqyl vaabprag fhfcrpg jub gheaf bhg gb or thvygl nsgre nyy) with pretty much the same results. "Summer Holiday at the World End" is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart taking place on the last day of summer break as Shinra, Tatsuki and classmates go the beach. There they hear a strange story of a student who briefly disappeared while exploring a mysterious cave with their friends. So they go explore it for themselves. Not really a bad story. Just very minor and very forgettable.

Katou pulls it together with the last story and ends C.M.B. vol 10 on a banger. "The Hydraulis" finds Shinra and Tatsuki in Milan, Italy, where Mau Sugal wants them to investigate a music chapel, located on a lonely mountain top, which has a hydraulis – a prototype of the pipe organ. That's the first of two mysteries attached to the music chapel. What's an out-of-date hydraulis doing in a 16th century music chapel? The second mystery has to do with its haunted reputation as a room that kills and harms. Everyone who tries to play the organ either dies or get seriously ill ("...there have been over 10 people who died inside that chapel"). "The Hydraulis" shares the same strengths and one weakness with "Sixty Million Years." Shinra's explanation of both how the music chapel poses a danger to people and why it was designed to do so are brilliant. But it needed another chapter to fully flesh everything out. Like the not unimportant historical background of the chapel and location. Other than that, this is a first-rate impossible crime story and original take of the room-that-kills. Highly recommended!

So, all in all, not a bad score for these two volumes. "Abortive Migration" and "The Nail" are the only two stinkers with "Summer Holiday at the World End" merely being forgettable. "The Sun and a Folklore" and "The Metamorphosis" are both good, solid efforts with "Sixty Million Years" and "The Hydraulis" being the two standouts. You expect one of them to turn up on that future "Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B." Not at all disappointed with these two volumes on a whole. What I'm not sure of yet is whether I'm going with C.M.B. vol. 11 and 12 next or start on Q.E.D. iff series. You'll see eventually.

Murder of the Admiral (1936) by Steve Fisher

Steve Gould Fisher was an American pulp writer and ex-Navy officer, serving four years on a submarine, where he cut his teeth as writer by penning articles and short stories for publications like Our Navy and U.S. Navy – earning the moniker of "The Navy's Foremost Writer." From the 1930s until the '50s, Fisher prolifically contributed to the detective and pulp magazines of the day, notably The Shadow magazine. Fisher also wrote close to twenty crime, detective and thriller novels, screenplays and television scripts.

During the 1930s, Fisher created a striking series-character, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome, who's the U.S. Naval Intelligence's in-house ace detective. Doome is tasked with investigating crimes committed within the jurisdiction of the Navy like ships, dockyards and bases. Sheridan Doome is not a striking character on account of wearing a Naval cap, instead of the figurative deerstalker, but the scars and injuries he suffered in a ship explosion during the World War. Doome miraculously survived, however, the surgeons had to put permanent steel plates over his entire chest and back. But they could do very little to patch up his face. Doome's head is like "bleached white bone" with a "scarred face as hairless as a piece of worn velvet" with black blotched for eyes and "a grim slit" as a mouth. On the upside, the steel plates made him practically bulletproof. Doome has a talent that made him very valuable to keep around.

Sheridan Doome is a first-rate detective who possesses "a brain so cunning, so astute, that there was not a man in the service who could match it" shielded behind an expressionless face on top of six feet four uniformed man – which makes him a nightmare fuel personified. Doome appeared in two novels and fifty-four short stories published in The Shadow magazine, where Doome became a hit with readers.

Now, I probably would never have heard or even become remotely aware of this once popular series had Fisher's Murder of the Admiral (1936) not been listed in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). So it ended up on the special locked room wishlist, but, unbeknownst to me, Murder of the Admiral was reprinted a few years ago by Age of Ages. Their reprint edition just wasn't available in my country and overlooked it entirely. Very irritating, but hey, you know me where locked room mysteries are concerned. Unless they reside in a parallel universe or don't exist, I'll get a hold on them sooner or later.

Murder of the Admiral, originally as by "Stephen Gould," begins with Sheridan Doome being assigned a new assistant, Rush Evans, who does a bit of writing on the side and narrates this story. Evans had grown bored with the peacetime routine and relished the opportunity to work alongside the well-known Navy detective. Even with the knowledge that Doome's previous assistant was killed on the job and wanting "to leap for the nearest window" when meeting Doome for the first time, but they quickly solidify into a great team. There are several weeks between their meeting and Doome summoning Evans to fly with him to a battleship, somewhere North of the Panama Canal, which has become the scene of a curious suicide of the battleship division's commander, Admiral Brown – who appeared to have shot himself after performing poorly in a war game. A war game exercise ending with a very angry, frustrates Admiral Brown yelling threats of suicide, murder and borderline treason, before kicking his flag lieutenant out of the room. The lieutenant had only just left the room when the gunshot was heard and another lieutenant across the Admiral's room was immediately at the door. So nobody could have left the room without being seen by the two lieutenants, proving suicide, but Doome suspects murder. That's where the trouble really begins as the partnership between Doome and Evans embarks on its maiden voyage.

Doome first inspection of the ship finds two stowaways: a well-known, but disastrously bad spy, Sonia, who imagines herself to be the next Mata Hari ("she was a bit demented on it..."). The other stowaway is a 19-year-old woman, Miss Judy Morrow, who's an aspiring author with three published short stories to her name. She wants to write a novel about stowaways and tagged along with Sonia in slinking aboard the battleship. However, Doome and Evans have the most trouble with the rotten apples among the ship's crew who defy and frustrate them at every turn often at the cost of their own lives. Some of the characters in this book appear to have a damaged sense of self preservation. This enrages Doome enough to briefly make him loose his cool, "when you are safe, you run out the door screaming bloody murder and you get murdered," telling them "you can all go back to your rooms, wander around the ship or do anything else you please." Doome was done trying to protect them and getting to the murderer through routine questioning. A satisfying response to the ship of fools that's starting to resemble Charon's ferry.

I want to mention here that Sheridon Doome is not at all the grotesque, theatrical puppet that comes across from this cursory glance. There's a theatrical element in the way Doome presents himself in public and acts when on a case, but that's all it is. Theatrics. When in private, Evans and the reader gets a glimpse of the person behind scarred, skeleton-like features and not merely his traumatic baggage – like having a son who believes he died in the explosion. Doome takes a genuine interest in his new assistant, encourages him to continue writing, plays matchmaker and occasionally showed he still had a (melancholic) sense of humor ("for a monster with a face like a battlefield, I do all right, don't, Rush"). Doome never showed this side when out on a case, but showing those brief, private moments balanced out his character and enhanced the scenes when playing up the detective-from-hell role. A good example of this is when Doome finds that one of the rotten apples among the crew grew up on the notorious East Side of New York. In private, Doome reflects on the abhorrent living conditions on the East Side that turned its children into career criminals, drug addicts (“dope fiends”) and poor, broken labors ("...they are the products of the East Side"). A surprising bit of social commentary to find in this often typical, pulp-style mystery and what makes Sheridan Doome the backbone of the story.

Not that the plot is bad. I would even call it above average for a pulp-style locked room mystery, but the plot is not spotless due to the usual shortcomings of the pulps. First of all, the shooting of Admiral Brown is not the only (quasi) impossibility of the story. There's another shooting in a darkened room in the presence of multiple witnesses, however, their solutions wouldn't secure Murder of the Admiral a place on anyone's list of favorite locked room mystery and impossible crime novels. Better in presentation than in how they're resolved. There is, however, a third impossibility tucked away in the appropriately titled chapter “Ship's Morgue” that briefly makes you believe you're reading a Theodore Roscoe novel. Not much is done with it as an impossible situation, but serves as a not unimportant piece of the puzzle. Surprisingly, Fisher included an unusual challenge to the reader, "WHO IS THE KILLER?," telling the reader "all of the action, clues and questions have pointed out that the killer can be only one person" and gives you two extra hints – ends with asking the reader to "write the name of the person you believe guilty here." While there's some stretching going on when it comes to murderer's identity, you can actually work it out based on the clues and chain of events. It's also a bit of an old dodge. So not as blistering original or rigorous as its Golden Age counterparts from the mid-1930s, but, for a pulpy mystery, Murder of the Admiral is first-rate entertainment and a great introduction to an unjustly forgotten character from the pulps. And, to quote Rush Evans' closing lines, "I knew, not unhappily, that there would be others."

A Gumshoe with Sea Legs: "Death at the Porthole" (1938) and "The Eye" (1945) by Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick is best known today for creating one of the most successful blind detectives in crime fiction, Captain Duncan Maclain, who not only overshadowed his other creations, but completely eclipsed a character like Miles Standish Rice – a Miami-based detective character. Rice appeared in three novels and seventeen short stories published in Black Mask, Mystery Novels Magazine and The Saint Mystery Magazine. I remember enjoying The Eleven of Diamonds (1936) and The Iron Spiders (1936), but not nearly as good as the best Captain Maclain novels (e.g. The Whistling Hangman, 1937). So they form a clear example of a main series character and secondary one.

I recently stumbled to the fact Kendrick had a third, short-lived and practically forgotten series-character. Cliff Chandler is the dandy, debonair ship's detective whose job it's to protect "the welfare of transatlantic passengers on the S.S. Moriander," which is an interesting premise for a series, but Chandler appeared in only two short stories published seven years apart.

The first of these two short stories, "Death at the Porthole," originally appeared in a 1938 publication of Country Home Magazine and reprinted in the November, 1944, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. "Death at the Porthole" takes place during the tenth, uneventful voyage of the S.S. Moriander, departing Southampton for New York, when "even the usual run of petty cardsharps seemed to have deserted her" – not much "guarding the passengers' welfare" to do. Although there are some curious incidents. Chandler meets a lovely young woman aboard, Elsa Graves, who appears to be packing a gun, but why? M. Jean Martone, "manufacturer extraordinary of a select line of cosmetics," accidentally falls overboard and has to be rescued. Finally, the woman with whom Elsa Graves shared a cabin, Dorette Maupin, is found dead with a broken neck. Chandler is a man of action who "thrived on excitement," but he has to do some real thinking and a bit of detective work to crack this case.

Even without the presence of the famous blind detective, "Death at the Porthole" is unmistakably a Baynard Kendrick detective story. It has a foot in both the hardboiled private eye story from the pulps and the formal detective story, which comes on account of the well-played who and how. Particular the latter is a dead giveaway as it plays on Kendrick's favored method of (SPOILER/ROT13) oevqtvat gur qvfgnapr orgjrra ivpgvz naq zheqrere, hfhnyyl ol qebccvat be guebjvat fbzrguvat, juvpu graq gb perngr na vzcbffvoyr fvghngvba be nyvov nybat gur jnl. "Death at the Porthole" can be linked to the previously mentioned The Whistling Hangman and The Eleven of Diamonds when it comes the how, but, of course, not worked out to the same extend. So rather simple by comparison, however, the bravado of the (ROT13) frpbaq zheqre is appreciated.

Kendrick's "Death at the Porthole" is not a classic, criminally overlooked short story from the detective story's golden era, but it's a promising start to what could have been a fascinating and fun series of pulpy short stories.

The second, and last, short story in the series, "The Eye," originally appeared in the November, 1945, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and leans more towards the pulp-thriller than the detective story – giving Cliff Chandler all the excitement he wanted. Chandler is approached by a frightened VIP passenger, Moira Nelson, who's a famous screen actress making the crossing with her 12-year-old son, manager and bodyguard. Moira Nelson received a threatening call pressing her to wear a pearl necklace, worthy fifty thousand dollars, to the ship's concert the next night or her son will pay the price. Having listened to her story, Chandler does an impromptu piece of armchair reasoning and not a bad solution either. But his solution ends playing right into the culprit's hands. So, as the villains reveal themselves, "The Eye" turns into a pulp caper with a delicate hint of piracy and how the ship's detective resolves this case is notably different from the first story (oyvaqvat entr). I was entertained enough and the trap triggered by Chandler's false-solution a clever touch, but I'll probably won't remember any of it. Not without looking back at what I wrote here.

"Death at the Porthole" and "The Eye," while not a bad or outstandingly good, are understandably footnotes in Kendrick's work, but there was potential had the series continued. I suspect this would have been one of those series best read in a collection of twelve or fifteen short stories, because atmosphere and backdrop (i.e. shipboard setting) is as important as a decent plot. Something like James Holding's The Zanzibar Shirt Mystery and Other Stories (2018), but more hardboiled.

A note for the curious: Cliff Chandler has been called the only ship's detective in the genre, but there's Cutcliffe Hyne's "The Looting of the Specie-Room" (1900) and John Dickson Carr's 1940s radio-detective, Dr. John Fabian, whose cases are gathered in The Island of Coffins and Other Mysteries from the Casebook of Cabin B-13 (2021).

A Yacht Sets Sail (1947) by Deck Dorval

"Deck Dorval" is the joined pseudonym of three Belgian authors, Frans van Dooren, Jef Beeckmans and Jos Deckkers, who had a forty-year friendship "based on their mutual interest in Esperanto, philosophy and literature" – evidently they loved detective stories. Together, they collaborated on two detective novels, Zwarte kunst (Black Arts, 1947) and Een jacht vaart uit (A Yacht Sets Sail, 1947). Van Dooren took on the bulk of the plotting and writing, Deckkers edited and Beeckmans gave it his critical eye.

That's the shortened, simplified history of the short-lived "Deck Dorval" series of detective novels, but putting its backstory together was a mini-puzzle.

Not every source mentions/recognizes Van Dooren's co-authors and some confusion exists over the original publication year of Black Arts and A Yacht Sets Sail, which is either 1945 or 1947. I believe the latter is the correct year as the 1945 date comes from a single source and it probably wasn't best year to launch a book with the whole World War II kerfuffle coming to an end. Curiously, the same source also mentions Van Dooren was known for a popular radio-series, Inspecteur Kant knapt het op (Inspector Kant Fixes It), that aired for 104 episodes on Radio-Antwerpen, but nothing can be found online – no air dates, episode descriptions or cast listings. So don't know if there's any relation between the Inspector Kant from the radio-series and Inspector Xaverius Kant from A Yacht Sets Sail. Nor am I sure if their books were originally written in Esperanto and then translated into Dutch/Flemish or the other way round. If they were written in Esperanto first, the translator, Christian Declerk, can probably be counted as the fourth collaborator to complete this "Quentin Quartet." Finally, the "Deck Dorval" name resurfaced after a forty year hiatus when Black Arts and A Yacht Sets Sail were reissued in the 1983 and 1990 as Boze geesten (Angry Spirits) and De dood aan boord (Death on Board). A few years later, Van Doorner, now in his late eighties, unsuccessfully tried to revive the series with two new novels, Kazinski komt te laat (Kazinski Arrives Too Late, 1992) and Urd Hadda werd vermoord (Urd Hadda was Murdered, 1993). Deckkers and Beeckmans had both died by then and Van Dooren followed his friends in 1996. So a bit of a scattered history, but now you're all caught up.

Some of you know I like to poke around the desolate ruins of the Dutch-language detective story from time to time. You can find a short overview of my findings in the review of Ine van Etten's De moord in het openluchtmuseum (Murder at the Open Air Museum, 1954). While poking around, I came across a few references to Deck Dorval with A Yacht Sets Sail appearing to be the best of their efforts. So jotted it down for future reference, but copies of both the original editions and reprints aren't available in abundance. I kind of forgot about it until someone got me a copy! Let's see how well it stands up as a detective story.

As you probably guessed from the title, A Yacht Sets Sail takes place aboard a large, luxurious private yacht, Zeevalk, property of an American industrialist and millionaire, Otto S. Maxton – who invited a dozen notables along on this leisurely voyage. There's his fellow industrialist, Herman Steinmann, who's accompanied by his wife, Maria, and their son, Alex. Count and Countess de la Fosse. Jean Baptiste de Groot, doctor of medicine, who brought along his wife, Sophie. Jean Dubois, a poet, Juan Gulopez, a Spanish philosopher and European chess champion, and a Miss Stella Sterlen. Additionally, Maxton brought along his private secretary, Miss Yvonne Durlet, manservant/butler, Henry Higgs, and notary/lawyer, Theodore van der Meersch. Last, but not least, the Flemish policeman Inspector Xaverius Kant.

Inspector Kant is both a little baffled Maxton invited a simple policeman along on a pleasure cruise aboard a private yacht in the company of high society, but also scolds himself ("...old fool") for having falling for the charms of Miss Durlet. Other than that, the voyage is calm and peaceful, until an incident with a drunken sailor bothering Countess de la Fosse. A normally minor, forgettable incident that ends up giving the entire crew an alibi when a shot rings out from Maxton's cabin. Someone shot the millionaire through the back of his head with a heavy caliber weapon, which left a terrible mess on the cabin floor. A bloodied button in Maxton's hand appears to give an early solution to the case, but Kant exposes the tell-tale clue for the red herring it really is and a second death deepens the mystery even further. A murder presented as a suicide, but, once again, Kant spots the camouflage and cuts right through it.

This is the point where the plot becomes tricky to discuss in detail as A Yacht Sets Sail is a as-describe-on-tin detective novel, which is both its primary strength and biggest weakness.

Firstly, the plot holds together, technically speaking, which makes for a genuine, if somewhat bland, Golden Age shipboard mystery. However, the two central plot-pieces, first and second murder, retread old ground. So you can easily see in which direction the ending is heading, despite the sincere attempts to fairly hide it. It betrays the authors were amateurs, well-intended amateurs, but amateurs who simply lacked the experience, polish and confidence to carry this piece of fan fiction to the status of a respectable second-stringer – because they showed less confidence in their own (hidden) ideas. The ending reveals the (SPOILER/ROT13) pnova jurer Znkgba pbhyq unir orra n irel hahfhny naq bevtvany ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel, juvpu jnf “ybpxrq” ol gur furyy pnfvat. Jura gurl bcrarq gur qbbe, nsgre urnevat gur fubg, gur qbbe fjrcg nfvqr gur furyy pnfvat naq cebirf abobql pbhyq unir yrsg gur ebbz nsgre gur fubg jnf sverq. I suppose they feared developing this “missed clue” into a full-fledged plot-thread would have given away too much, but would also have given Kant a break from interviewing everyone to chew on that puzzling aspect of the case. It certainly would have put a stamp of their own on the plot.

So the only surprising bit about the ending is how Kant's solution is revealed to be a false-solution by another character, a rival detective is always fun, but here it really came at the expense of Kant's character. Why not make both their solutions kind of correct? It can be done without altering a single letter, or comma, to the story. Simply have the culprit from the false-solution intervene with the plans from the correct solution and the result would be exactly the same, but with a pleasing bit of complexity and some depth added to it. Yes, having multiple culprits can be hackwork, but it can work with the right story. A Yacht Sets Sail is one of those stories in which multiple culprits would not have only worked, but improved the plot with the professional's practical solution paired with the armchair musings of the amateur. So there's definitely more here than the three authors got out of it and had they shown a bit more confidence and daring, A Yacht Sets Sail could have been more than merely an average, inoffensive and lightweight shipboard mystery.

Well, I guess the search for good, classic, or classically-styled, Dutch detective fiction continues. Surely, there has to be another locked room gem like Cor Docter's Koude vrouw in Kralingen (Cold Woman in Kralingen, 1970) or a treat like Ton Vervoort hidden somewhere?

The Aluminum Turtle (1960) by Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick's The Aluminum Turtle (1960), alternatively titled The Spear Gun Murders, is the eleventh, and penultimate, novel in the Captain Duncan Maclain series published early in the post-Golden Age era of the genre – which tries to keep up with the rapidly changing times. An old school detective story with a new class of criminals and attitudes to crime. It's not only the ever-changing times that makes The Aluminum Turtle distinctly different from the 1930s and '40s novels taking place in a darker, pulpier version of New York City. The Aluminum Turtle brings Captain Maclain and his entire entourage to the sunnier climes of Florida. Captain Maclain has a good reason to return to Florida.

Seven years ago, Ronald Dayland was brutally killed in a presumably robbery gone wrong somewhere between Tampa Airport and Courtney Campbell Parkway. Dayland had been battered with "almost maniacal ferocity" and his wallet had been emptied, but why didn't robber take a valuable gold watch and a diamond ring? Sheriff Dave Riker, of Poinsettia County, doesn't believe this is a simple robbery gone wrong and turned his attention to a club of teenage delinquents calling themselves the Water Rovers. They started out as an outlet for bored teenagers, boat races and skin divers, before broadening their activities to drinking parties, drag racing with the family car and eventually small, costly crime sprees. Everything from rowboats, cruisers and outboard motors to anchors, tools and other gear were "slickly stolen." But did they extend their activities to robbery and murder? Sheriff Riker never got the proof and the unsolved murder had terrible consequences for Dayland's then twelve year old son, Ronnie.

Dayland is the owner of the successful Dayland Fruit Company, which ensured his wife and son had everything they wanted, but the emotionally neglected Ronnie has always craved the attention of his parents and went out of his way to get it – like arson and crashing a boat. In the years following his father's murder and second marriage of his mother, Ronnie went "down the sliding board from marihuana to pills and the needle" to become "an expert snowbird and doomed entirely."

Captain Maclain is an old friend of the Daylands whose work in New York and the lack of an official invitation prevented him from probing the murder of his old, long-time friend. Ronnie intends to use their fishing trip to ask Captain Maclain for help with his addiction, because it was easier to ask someone "who couldn't see the terror in his face" or "read the truth of his weakness." Very different to how Kendrick handled the "funny cigarettes" in The Last Express (1937) decades earlier. Their one-on-one aboard Ronnie's fishing boat, the A-bomb, sets the tone and pieces for the overall story.

Firstly, Ronnie's plan to ask for help is shelved when he fishes up a curious looking object: an aluminum turtle with rubber flippers, head and tail. Ronnie believes he had "lucked on to an underwater buoy that marked some sunken treasure." Something that's going to propel to plot later on. Secondly, Captain Maclain is firmly in fallible detective mode. Not only for neglecting the murder of his friend for seven years ("wasn't it more of an obligation to do his best to solve the murder of a friend... than to take a fee to investigate the murder of some person he had never known?"), but trying to understand Ronnie and his generation ("their jargon is as uncomprehensible as their music") and generally getting older. That's why he's unsure what's happening half of the time ("there were undercurrents he couldn't fathom") with the developing case rubbing it in his face how depended he still is on Sybella, Spud Savage, Rena and his two dogs, Schnucke and Dreist.

The developing case comes to a head when Captain Maclain joins the boating party returning to the spot where Ronnie discovered the aluminum turtle. Ronnie dives into the water with an hour's supply of air, but never resurfaces and ninety minutes later they call the coast guard. Not long thereafter his body is recovered, but Ronnie didn't drown. He was shot with a spear gun. Suddenly, the sea is crawling with potential suspects. Two members of the Water Rovers were spotted nearby with one entering the water carrying a spear gun and boat that recovered the body is manned by cut-throat treasure hunters. Not to mention a fleet of shrimpers, run by an ex-mobster, known to be a cover for a huge smuggling operation. There are more spear gun killings, past and present, discovered and committed along the way.

However, the plot of The Aluminum Turtle lacks the puzzling complexity of earlier novels like The Whistling Hangman (1937) and Blind Man's Bluff (1943). The murder method has echoes of those two novels (ROT13: perngvat gur vyyhfvba bs qvfgnapr orgjrra zheqrere naq ivpgvz), but nothing is done with it, plot-wise, before being explained away between a few sentences. Only real plot-complexity, to speak of, is the school of red herrings trying to obscure a routine plot and rather obviously murderer. So the focus of The Aluminum Turtle is not on the traditional who, why and how, but how Captain Maclain grapples with this case and himself. If you have only read the pre-1950s novels, The Aluminum Turtle feels like a threadbare affair with too much drama and not enough plot. More like Brett Halliday than Ellery Queen. Fortunately, I really like Captain Maclain and appreciated what Kendrick attempted to do here, which I think fans of the character will agree with. But, purely as a detective novel, The Aluminum Turtle is a far cry from the first five, or so, novels. I highly recommend you start there before skipping this far ahead.

That being said, The Aluminum Turtle has made me curious about the last title in the series, Frankincense and Murder (1961), which sounds like a hyper conventional drawing room mystery. The kind of drawing room mystery most of Kendrick's contemporaries debuted with in the '20s and '30s. You might see a review of that one before too long.

Memory Fail: Q.E.D. vol. 47-49 by Motohiro Katou

The first, of two, stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Sun is Still Blazing," takes place at a secret and highly secured NSA research on a remote, isolated island near Indonesia – where an important file with research data went missing. And ended up destroyed. Only problem is that the research facility is tightly secured and closely scrutinized suggesting an inside job.

Was it the somewhat eccentric head researcher and "world-renowned expert in math and logic," Kurt Gidel? Or one of three members of his research staff, Carlos Balma, Walter Chapman and Judith Grey? Considering the stolen and destroyed data included sensitive, classified information, it was decided to hold an internal investigation in order to close the case as soon as possible. Sou Touma was asked to act as an independent investigator with Kana Mizuhara tagging along to the remote Indonesian island.

The theft of the file is something of an impossible crime. It apparently went missing in the meeting room, tightly secured, where Gidel and his staff gather to discuss ideas and work out problems on a blackboard. Gidel was sitting next to the backboard to listen to his staff members and judge their ideas, while the file rested on the blackboard's ledge. During their last meeting, the black book file was somehow swapped with a dummy file, miraculously smuggled out of the institute and destroyed – even though everyone was thoroughly searched. Another complication to the case is Gidel himself. A genius who only wanted "to sit back and relax at a beautiful island" to solve complicated math problems from a beach chair. He also provides a couple of confusing false-solutions and asks Touma if they were useful. Kana is ready to throttle him when answering, "yes, it was." What's most surprising is how simple, unvarnished and straight forward this story. No grand tricks. Touma's chain of deductions simply answers the three main questions: how was the file swapped, how was it stolen and whodunit with even the equally simple and unvarnished motive being a clue to the culprit's identity. A simple, straightforward, but good and effective little detective story.

Second story of Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Slope," is surprisingly a Kana Mizuhara-centric story hearkening back to her middle school days when she stood for a bullied classmate, Utagawa Aki. She returned to their first middle school reunion having become a promising young model with rising profile, but she always wanted to know why Kana trusted her unconditionally. Particularly during an embarrassing incident when a stolen video game was found in her desk. Kana was the only one believed in her innocence and stuck up for her, which saved her neck with the teacher. But why? Kana can't remember why she believed her. When Kana goes with a few other old classmates to her apartment an envelope with household money disappears, possibly mislaid by accident. But a thorough search of place turns up exactly nothing.

Kana calls Touma for help and advises her to search the apartment again, but, this time, she has to "search with the assumption that someone has hidden it deliberately" – not simply gotten lost or misplaced. Finding the missing money raises more questions than answers. However, the missing money is only a vehicle to tell Utagawa's backstory and why Kana believed her. A decent enough story, but not nearly as good or memorable as that other Kana Mizuhara-centric story, "Summer Time Capsule," from vol. 26. So, on a whole, these two stories aren't standouts of the series, but put together, they form a pretty solid volume.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 48, "The Representative," begins with a police report of a
break-in at an empty house. When the police came to investigate, they discovered a bizarre scene: the body of man, partially wrapped in tarp, lying in the middle of a room next to an unfinished, half-dug hole in the floor. The victim is Kabuto Shigeki, a representative for authors, who worked for the Orange Copyright Agency. His most well-known client is a reclusive, bestselling author, Semi Ichika, whose Crater Bungee sold over a million copies. Kabuto Shigeki was about to receive the finished manuscript for his next book. Orange Copyright Agency, pressured by his publisher, is eager to get their hands on the manuscript, but Ichika is notoriously difficult to work with. And dislikes most of their staff members ("I tried too hard to impress him..."). So the new, young and completely inexperienced Tento Seiko gets to job of trying to handle and appease Ichika. She's friends with Mizuhara and Sou Touma eventually follows to "solve this series of unfortunate events," but not before another body is added to the tally.

"The Representative" is a really good detective story, nearly an inverted mystery, but there's a pleasing, craftily applied a nearly invisible layer to the whodunit. So to truly solve this story, the armchair detective has to find answer to all the questions. From the murky motive and behavior of the author to the condition in which the first victim was discovered. A possible contender to be included in part two "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D."

The next story, "Fahya's Drawing Book," is undoubtedly a crime/detective story of today's age. It centers on a poor Moroccan child, Fahya, who's teenage cousin, Hamdan, has heard their uncle made a lot of money working in Spain and wants to join him – boarding a ship to smuggle him and others into Europe. Fahya's joins him as a stowaway, where she witnesses a murder from her hiding place, before the ship runs into the coast guard. That confrontation quickly dissolves into a shoot out killing seventeen people aboard the ship, but Fahya an Hamdan made it to the shore. Fahya disappearing from her home and the smuggling vessel has not gone unnoticed.

Alan Blade, the CEO of Alansoft, last appeared in "Disaster Man's Wedding" (vol. 34) when he got married to his secretary, Ellie, who founded a joined charity as part of their wedding gift. They wanted to provide a poor child from Africa with a scholarship to guarantee them an education and Ellie picked (surprise, surprise) Fahya. Alan brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara into the case to help find the little girl, but they're not the only ones looking for her. So an interesting enough premise for modern mystery, but nothing truly interesting emerges from it and feels more like a curiosity than anything else. Although I doubt that was the intention considering it tackles human trafficking, missing children and a shoot out on a boat with nearly twenty casualties. I was especially reminded of, what's perhaps, Edward D. Hoch's worst short story, "The Starkworth Atrocity" (1998), which tried to do something similar with even less impressive results. Sadly, this volume ends with one of the weakest stories in the series.

Regrettably, Q.E.D. vol. 49 is rather weak on a whole, but the first story, "Unrelated Cases," has its moments. Stanley Lau and Sammy Chow are the leaders of two opposing criminal organizations who have decided to meet at a dinner in Hong Kong, but the place is shot up and their bodyguards immediately form a human shield around the two mob bosses. Someone, somehow, shot Sammy Chow through the heart while surrounded by his bodyguards. The shot came from a deserted, dead end alleyway. Some time later in Japan, Tomashino Kyohei, a college student, is roped by his criminally optimistic friend, Sasaki Tatsuoka, to take some money from his workplace to help them along. When the arrive on the 21st floor of a dark, empty building, they discover Lau and his men torturing and killing a man. They managed to escape from the building, but now they have band of gangsters after them. Tomashino Kyohei's younger brother, Haruhiko, asks his school friends, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara, to help them out.

I said this story has it's moments and there are exactly two. Firstly, the impossible shooting of Sammy Chow in Hong Kong. It's a fine demonstration of the advantages a visual medium like manga (comics) has over prose when dealing with locked room murders, impossible crimes and complicated tricks, because it's just fun to see the murder being carried out during the flashback – fun enough to almost overlook how preposterous the trick really is. I think the trick would have worked better in a less risky, more controlled environment like a theatrical stage or movie set. Secondly, the final confrontation between Touma and Lau. Hardboiled brains, indeed! So not the best story in the series, nor anywhere near the bottom.

"Love Story" closes out Q.E.D. vol. 49 and is another heart-shaped, character-driven puzzles, but not an especially memorable one and struggled to remember anything about it as soon as I finished it. The main gist of the story is an unfinished, 45-year-old movie shot by the movie club of a private college starring a college student who's spitting image of Kana Mizuhara. How very Gosho Aoyama of you, Katou. Nearly half a century, two of the since then married, now elderly club members bump into Kana and the urge is immediately there to finish the movie. Only for the man to die of a heart attack while editing the movie. And he leaves behind some questions. This one just didn't capture my attention. Katou has done these human puzzle stories better before.

So an unfortunate weak ending to the penultimate volume in the series. Even more unfortunate, the overall quality of these three volumes is fairly weak. Only good two stories are "The Sun is Still Blazing" and "The Representative." "The Slope" is a fairly decent character piece and "Unrelated Cases" has, as said before, its moments. But the same can't be said of "Fahya's Drawing Book" or "Love Story." Let's hope I can end this series on an optimistic note with the coming review of Q.E.D. vol. 50.

Tales of a Steam Hotel: "The Looting of the Specie-Room" (1900) by Cutcliffe Hyne

C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne was a British writer who was "one of the most prolific and successful producers of early magazine SF" and novels like The Lost Continent (1899), but also wrote short stories of action, adventure and mystery – like his once popular Captain Kettle series in Pearson's Magazine. So a fictioneer in the tradition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who himself had a series of pirate stories published in Pearson's Magazine and authored the famous science-fiction novel, The Lost World (1912).

Fittingly, Hyne contributed one of those so-called, turn-of-the-century "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" in "one of the artfullest pursers in all the Western Ocean passenger trade," Mr. Horrocks.

Mr. Horrocks appeared in a short series of six short stories, "Tales of a Steam Hotel," published between July and December 1900 in, where else, Pearson's Magazine. "The Looting of the Specie-Room" is the first story and introduces Horrocks as the experienced purser on the Liverpool-New York line of the Town S.S. Company. A purser, Horrocks reminds the reader, is not only the man for passengers to throw complaints at or tell them stories of the sea at dinner, but "answerable for a sight more than any Captain that ever wore uniform" – whose latest responsibility is 1.25 million dollars in gold bullion. A precious cargo stored in the ship's specie-room, tucked away under the saloon, walls, floor and roof made of steel plates and an unpickable lock on the door. So "nothing short of dynamite would open that specie-room to a man who hadn't a key." And the person in possession of the only key to the specie-room is Horrocks.

That becomes something of problem when half of the gold bullion disappears from the supposedly securely locked specie-room. So the assumption is Horrocks had been careless enough with the key to allow someone to make an impression of the key and make a duplicate, which places his job in peril. But not to his personal detriment.

"The Looting of the Specie-Room" is very much a first in a series and gives Horrocks a sketchy backstory. Horrocks is a bachelor who was bequeathed a considerable sum from a late uncle, "his wants were small, and his private income covered them easily," who uses his income as a purser to secretly finance a personal charity project. Horrocks created a false identity, Mr. Rocks of Rocks' Orphanage, to provide a home for "those wretched children of the slums." It's their "maintenance and relief" that's really at stake. However, Horrocks is not an entirely saintly character as it's made very clear he supplemented his income on the side by "various well-recognized methods" of the passenger trade.

Another troublesome aspect confusing the matter is the Chief Officer of the Birmingham, Godfrey Clayton, who desperately needed a large sum of money. Horrocks had teased him about the shipment of gold in the specie-room. But when Clayton gets arrested, Horrocks receives a letter begging him to clear up the case or get killed when he gets released.

The solution, or the key towards the solution, is more or less dropped in Horrocks lap. Simply works out the whole scheme from there. You have to keep in mind this short story was published a 124 years ago and barely resembles the traditional, fair play detective story that would emerge over the next twenty, thirty years – an acceptable enough excuse for breaking a few cardinal rules. That being said, I enjoyed Horrocks mildly toying with the idea of false-solutions as he considered and rejected the idea of having been hypnotized or chloroformed in order to make an impression of the key as absurd. No duplicate key was employed in the theft of the gold nor the parcel of diamonds that disappeared under similar circumstances during the voyage to New York.

Not that the actual locked room-trick is blistering original, but how it was done, and where, certainly counts for something this early in the game. The specie-room (SPOILER/ROT13) jnf oernpurq ol perngvat n qbbejnl sebz na nqwnprag pnova hfvat fhpu zbqrea tnqtrgf nf na bkl-ulqebtra synzr srq ol tnf sebz fgrry plyvaqref. Guvf qbbejnl jnf perngrq va n funqbjl cneg bs gur fcrpvr-ebbz naq na nppbzcyvpr (“n pyrire pnecragre”) jbexrq njnl gur genprf yngre jvgu serfu cnaryvat naq cnvag. Lrf, gur fbyhgvba vf cerggl zhpu n frperg rkvg, ohg abg n cer-rkvfgvat bar. Vg unq gb or znqr naq pybfrq ntnva. Fb vg pbzovarq gur neg bs ubhfroernxvat, fnsr penpxvat naq fzhttyvat gb perngr n ybpxrq ebbz gursg naq vzcbffvoyr qvfnccrnenapr bs unys n zvyyvba va tbyq sebz n fuvc. That's not bad at all for a short, borderline detective story about an impossible theft from 1900. You can read story here and judge for yourself.

A note for the curious: "The Looting of the Specie-Room" was adapted for the 1970s TV-series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, but not collected in any of the Rival-themed anthologies. I wonder how this obscure came to their attention. Anyway, "The Looting of the Specie-Room" was collected together with the other five stories in Mr. Horrocks, Purser (1902).

Shadowed Sunlight (1945) by Christianna Brand

Last time, I discussed Christianna Brand's Death in High Heels (1941), very much an apprentice work full with undeveloped potential and promise, but for a detective story from the forties, it has aged remarkably well – closer a police procedural from the 1980s or '90s than a Golden Age mystery. So even when she's not pulling a Carr or Christie, Brand's can deliver a detective story not devoid of merit of interest. However, it didn't quite scratch that itch and decided to go right back to Brand. And with good reason.

I rambled on about lost manuscripts and other extraordinarily obscure detective fiction not so long ago, but what I neglected to mention in those laments is that efforts are being made to salvage what has been lost. In the past, I recounted Philip Harbottle's Herculean labors to restore the works of John Russell Fearn and Gerald Verner to print, which include some superb, previously unpublished, novels (e.g. Fearn's Pattern of Murder, 2006). Three years ago, the British Library published E.C.R. Lorac's Two-Way Murder (c. 1958), originally written shortly before she died, but not published until 2021. Then there's Tony Medawar's Bodies from the Library anthology series dedicated to "bring into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown" from the Golden Age of Detection.

An annual series collecting obscure, rarely reprinted short stories, previously unpublished work and even plays from a who's who of classic mystery writers – covering both American and British writers. So you get rare or unpublished stories from the likes of Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Boucher and Clayton Rawson. The Bodies from the Library series has proven to be a small treasure trove of previous unpublished work for fans of Christianna Brand. A big regret of her fans is that "she didn't write enough," but "new" material has been added in recent years to Brand's bibliography.

"Cyanide in the Sun" (1958) and "Bank Holiday Murder" (19??) had not been reprinted since their original appearance in The Daily Sketch ("a British newspaper which folded fifty years ago"), but respectively reprinted in The Realm of the Impossible (2017) and the Sept/Oct, 2017, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The never before published "The Rum Punch" appeared in the first Bodies from the Library (2018) anthology ("the highlight of the collection and an impossible mystery at that") and Bodies from the Library 4 (2021) contains an entire, long overlooked and nearly forgotten (short-ish) novel! There's still that planned Crippen & Landru collection (The Dead Hold Fast and Other Stories) and the unpublished impossible crime novel The Chinese Puzzle. Someone, like James Scott Byrnside, could complete the unfinished Cat Among the Pigeons. Anyway...

The subject of today's review is Shadowed Sunlight, originally serialized in Woman from July to August 1945, but was somehow forgotten about until it returned to print in Bodies from the Libraries 4. I don't remember ever hearing or reading about Shadowed Sunlight, before it was finally reprinted a few years ago. I was aware the unpublished The Chinese Puzzle and "The Dead Hold Fast," but never noticed even the briefest of mentions of this small, typical Brandian gem completely with a tight-drawn cast of characters and a seemingly impossible murder – only Cockrill and Charlesworth are absent. More on that in a moment.

Shadowed Sunlight takes place as the Second World War came to an end and "it was 'Britain is Grateful Week' for returning heroes," which means charity events to collect donations, war bonds and to welcome back the boys. Edgar "Thom-Thom" Thom is a successful ex-businessman who had his retirement cut short by the war to serve his country, as Director of Anthracite Production, but now intends to combine charity work with pleasure. Thom has taken his beloved racing cutter Cariad out of storage to "give those kids up at the naval school a run for their money" and to collect some money for the savings campaign. So brings together a small group of friends and young people to celebrate and enjoy the sailing.

Firstly, there's Gloria and her second husband, Geoffrey Winson, and their 7-year-old daughter, Charlotte, who's simply called "Tiggy." Jenny Sendall is Gloria's 19-year-old daughter from her first marriage. She brought along her boyfriend, Roy Silver, who's the "Silver Voice of Radio." Tiggy is looked after by the overworked, underpaid nursemaid, Miss Pye. She's not always on the best of term with her employers. Truda Dean and her boyfriend, Julian Messenger, get invited on their way to Trudy's grandmother, Lady Audian, to tell her of their intention to get married. Lastly, there's Thom's personal secretary, Evan Stone, who helped to arrange the boating party. But then things begin to get awkward really fast.

Julian Messenger used to be engaged to Jenny Sendall, but, when returning home from war, Julian asked Jenny to release him from his promise to marry her – because he wanted to marry Trudy. Jenny agreed to his request, "she was awfully sweet and nice about breaking off our engagement," but not her cash-strapped parents. Gloria and Geoffrey learn about this right before a day before the boating party. So they force her to promise to take action against Julian for breach of promise. Things don't end there. A day before the race, the group attends Miss Templeton's dance party ending with the mysterious theft of their host's emerald pendant in platinum setting. An ill-omen, indeed, but nothing compared to what awaits them the next day.

Midday, the next day, they have a picnic aboard, "just a rough, homely picnic," where everyone handles, eats and drinks the same things, but only one of them dies from cyanide poisoning. Somehow, or other, the murderer had poisoned something the victim ate or drink, mere minutes before, which appears to be an utter impossibility. Nobody could have administered the poison. An impossible poisoning aboard a racing yacht with a small, intimate circle of potential suspects.

I mentioned in the review of Death in High Heels that the book ends with Charlesworth getting assigned to a new case, "a murder in a racing yacht," wondering whether it could be the story told in the so far unpublished novella The Dead Hold Fast. Well, Shadowed Sunlight certainly ticks the murder-in-a-racing-yacht box, but Charlesworth is not the one who Scotland Yard sends to clear up the murder. Detective Inspector Dickinson, "a university pup with very little experience," because "a straightforward poisoning in a yacht, where, of necessity, the suspects must be few and the solution merely a matter of motive and opportunity, had seemed, to the simple hearts of his superiors, a cinch" – putting him on his first solo case. However, the murder proves far from straightforward from the apparent impossibility of administrating the poison, a mass drugging on the previous evening and stolen poison to the theft of the emerald and the death of Gloria's first husband. All tied up in a complicated tangle of relationships, emotions and possible motives with Tiggy both helping and hampering Dickinson's investigation. I agree with Jim when he said Tiggy can be added "alongside the Carstairs clan to the pantheon of Perfectly Realised Young People in GAD fiction." The characters, their interactions and complicated relationships really is the story's strong point.

Shadowed Sunlight is very much a character-driven mystery novel in the tradition of the Golden Age Crime Queen with twisty, psychological touches rather than a John Dickson Carr-style impossible crime tale. Brand's skillful hand at measuring out emotions is on full display, which she always beautifully balanced and seldom done in shades of a single color. For example (Minor SPOILERS/ROT13), gur Jvafbaf ner gehyl n cnve bs ercryyrag punenpgref, ohg Gvttl frrvat ure sngure nyy bs n fhqqra qvr sebz cbvfbavat naq pelvat bhg (“qnqql, jnxr hc, jnxr hc—!”) znxrf vg ernyyl harnfl gb purre fbzrbar ba jub, ol gur raq, vf cebira gb or bar bs gubfr qrfreivat ivpgvzf bs qrgrpgvir svpgvba. Be gur jrqtr bs fhfcvpvba guerngravat gb qevir n, huz, jrqtr orgjrra Whyvna naq Gehql.

Brand wasn't half-bad when it came to creating an engaging set of characters and knew how to insert genuine drama or an emotional monkey into a detective story without turning it into a cheap, gaudy melodrama. She often knew how to exploit it to deliver an emotional gut punch ending that made genre classics out of so many of her novels. Shadowed Sunlight certainly has a somewhat mixed ending, where the fates of the characters are concerned and you can't help feeling a little sorry for the murderer, but not the wrenching conclusion of a Green for Danger (1944) or London Particular (1952). However, it would be a unfair to hold this shorter, originally serialized and character-driven, novel up against those towering examples of Golden Age ingenuity and plotting. Brand evidently intended Shadowed Sunlight to be on a lighter note than something like Green for Danger and is to Brand's work what Peril at End House (1932) is to Christie. An excellent detective novel in its own right, but one that will always be overshadowed by its author's even better and more popular works.

So what about the actual meat of the plot? And, more specifically, the impossible poisoning? The plot is lighter and more character-oriented than Brand's other novels, but, on a whole, not bad with the only disappointing plot-thread being the stolen emerald pendant. I figured that part out pretty quickly and not up to Brand usual standards, but everything else was simply solid. Particularly the neat poisoning-trick that explained the impossible murder. I have come to associate this kind of impossible poisoning and solution with Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed series, which often feature similar impossibly poisoned food/drink in public/open places. So coming across one every now and then in a Golden Age detective story only adds interest. If there's anything to complain about is that Shadowed Sunlight was reprinted as part of an anthology instead of published as a separate novel. It would need a lengthy introduction, bibliography and extra short story ("Cyanide in the Sun") to pad out the page-count, but a “new” Brand novel deserves nothing less, especially when it's as good as Shadowed Sunlight.

Cutting this long, rambling and quasi-coherent shitty scribbling short, I really, really enjoyed Shadowed Sunlight. It was exactly what I was hoping to find when I picked up Death in High Heels: a lighter-plotted, but still unmistakably, Brandian detective story. While the story nor characters and plot soared to the same heights as Green for Danger or London Particular, it's restoration to print is cause for celebration. The fulfillment of a seemingly impossible wish of seeing Brand's all-too-small body of work miraculously expand. I suspect James got hold of a Monkey's Paw. Next up is probably going to be a review of one of Brand's short stories to complete the hat trick.