Tragedy at the Unicorn (1928) by John Rhode

Tragedy at the Unicorn (1928) is only the fifth novel, of more than seventy, in the Dr. Lancelot Priestley series by "John Rhode," a pseudonym of John Street, which used to be one of his many out-of-print, hard to get and expensive titles to get a hold-of – until Spitfire Publishers reprinted it last year. Rhode's Tragedy at the Unicorn also used to be one of those rare, out-of-print impossible crime novels from a well-known mystery writer and the reason why it had been on my locked room wishlist for ages. So this is another obscure title that can be crossed off the list.

Tragedy at the Unicorn takes place in-and around the Unicorn Hotel in the seaport town of Clayport, "one of the best-known yachting centres on the south coast," which is run by Mrs. Burgess and her two daughters, Joan and Phyllis. Clayport is the home port of the Levity, a ketch, belonging to Bob Weldon, the skipper. Levity's crew comprises of Richard Gateman, Percy Hunter and the story's narrator, Mr. Attercliffe, who are all frequent guests at the Unicorn Hotel. But they're not the only guests who checked in on that late summer afternoon. There's Edward Motimer, a yachtsman, who owns a motor cruised named Dreamland, the detestable Dr. Victor Grinling and his valet, Ferguson. And, of course, it's the caustic Dr. Grinling who's going to end up causing trouble for everyone.

Next morning, Ferguson is unable to wake his master ("let sleeping Grinlings lie") and it takes a while before they can unlock the bedroom, but, when they finally go inside, they find Dr. Grinling lying "stone dead" in his bed. An empty syringe is found on the bedside table alongside a phial with small tablets of heroin ("one-sixth of a grain"). So remember the previous review in which I pointed out Helen McCloy's Dance of Death (1938) was written during a period when heroin was an over-the-counter drug? I couldn't have randomly picked a better book to make that point as Dr. Gringling was in the habit of taking "heroin injections for sleeplessness," remarking "he would have no difficulty obtaining the stuff" and "would know it would do him no harm" – "unless he took an overdose." If I were a publisher, I probably would have inserted a bunch of vintage ads for heroin cough drops and cocaine-laced "patent medicines" ("COCAINE TOOTHACHE DROPS, NOW WITH EVEN MORE COCAINE!"). That's not all.

A postmortem reveals had injected heroin, but what killed him was a second injection with morphia. Not the heroin. There were morphine tablets mixed with his heroin tablets, "all similar in appearance," which could make an accidental overdose, suicide or murder ("MRS. WINSLOW'S SOOTHING SYRUP FOR TEETHING CHILDREN, NOW WITH EVEN MORE MORPHINE!!"). Superintendent Collins is the first to take a crack at the case, but Dr. Priestley arrives right before the halfway mark to take charge of the investigation. This is, of course, one of Dr. Priestley's earlier cases and has yet to become the sedentary armchair oracle of later books. So the chapter following his arrival sees him all over the hotel to inspect and oil locks and hinges. Unfortunately, this proves to be short-lived as Tragedy at the Unicorn regrettably ended up being a flawed, undefined work of its time and an author who still has to find his footing in the genre.

The 1920s was a decade when the Golden Age detective story of the 1930s and '40s was taking shape and solidifying, which naturally came with some growing pains. Tragedy at the Unicorn goes from a promising, early Golden Age whodunit during the first-half to an uninspired, routine thriller in the second-half – involving a smuggling operation (of course). That's not a spoiler. It's patently obvious from the start smuggling is going on the background and it became the focal point of the second-half. Funnily enough, the smuggling operation is partly run by a Dutch gang peddling drugs between Clayport and Rotterdam, because why not ("THE NETHERLANDS, NOW WITH EVEN MORE CANNABIS!!!"). Dr. Priestley even translates a telegram in Dutch, even though his "knowledge of Dutch is not very extensive." Other than that, it has nothing noteworthy or anything particular to recommend. Just a smugglers doing what smugglers do.

So what about the murder of Dr. Grinling? The locked room setup looked promising: a solid door locked from the inside with the key still in the lock that "turns very stiffly." Only window was shut and fastened. The connecting door was locked with the key hanging on a board Joan's bedroom and blocked on both sides of the door by heavy washing stands. More than enough room to work out a halfway decent locked room-trick, but Rhode kept the locked room-trickery very rudimentary and very, very disappointing. Rhode at least tried to do something with the murderer's identity and motive, but the result is not exactly the stuff of classics. Both obvious and disappointing. So, simply as a detective novel or locked room mystery, Rhode's Tragedy at the Unicorn has nothing to offer or recommend. Unless you're a John Street completist or one of those nuts trying to go through every title Robert Adey listed in Locked Room Murders (1991). Rhode was much more successful with the impossible crime story in novels like Invisible Weapons (1938), Death in Harley Street (1946) and the "Miles Burton" novel Death in the Tunnel (1936). So I'll recommend them instead.

Note for the curious: why not end with a halfway decent solution, for 1928, to the locked room that occurred to me after the murder was discovered. What if Dr. Grinling told his killer to come to his room after he retired, but instructed the killer to come through the connecting door. Yes, the killer has a way to unlock the door. So they move aside the washstands, the killer unlocks the connecting door and enters to conduct their shady business. The killer is, of course, well aware of Dr. Grinling's habit to take a shot of heroin before going to sleep and brought along a syringe loaded with morphia. When the doctor was distracted, the killer swapped the heroin syringe for the morphia one. The killer left the room, locked the connecting door, washing stands returned to their original place and Dr. Grinling took his deadly injection in a perfectly locked room. This brilliant piece of armchair reasoning fell apart when it was shown he had taken both the heroin and morphia injections. At least I enjoyed cranking out this review.

This review was brought to you by: BAYERS HEROIN, THE SEDATIVE FOR COUGHS, NOW WITH EVEN MORE HEROIN!!!!

Last One to Leave (2022) by Benjamin Stevenson

Benjamin Stevenson's first two Ernest Cunningham novels, Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone (2022) and Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2024), are not only the two highlights of 2025, but represent another step towards a Second Golden Age for the detective story – only the holiday theme kept from dipping into the third novel. I realize it has been a newly established tradition for Christmas to come earlier, and earlier, each year, but figured a review of Everyone this Christmas has a Secret (2024) would still be on early side.

So decided to hold off on Everyone this Christmas has a Secret, until at least the leaves start to turn brownish. Fortunately, the Ernest Cunningham series is not Stevenson's first stab at the detective story. Stevenson wrote two novels about disgraced TV producer Jack Quick, She Lies in the Vines (2019) and Either Side of Midnight (2020), of which the second is an impossible crime novel concerning a shooting on live television ("One million witnesses... One impossible murder"). That one is currently on the big pile, but there are also two short novels, Find Us (2021) and Last One to Leave (2022), collected under the title Fool Me Twice (2024). Last One to Leave sounded like an intriguing take on the classically-styled detective story with a modern framing. Or, to be more precise, the premise struck me as specifically tailored for playing the Grandest Game in the World.

Ryan Jaegan is a widowed father of a 12-year-old daughter, Lydia, who entered his name for competition thrown by a notorious Youtube channel, CashSmashers. A channel with millions of subscribers, hundreds of millions of views and a major sponsorship from a gambling company, providing them with ample resources to pull some outrageous stunts – like dropping parachutes with sacks of money from a helicopter ("they were chasing clicks and views, after all"). They also do competitions with big money prizes. Such "Last One to Leave" contests where a group holds on to a luxury car with the person who holds on to it the longest gets to keep it. Ryan has little money and has debts with the wrong kind of people. So reluctantly agrees to participate and finds himself competing with six other people for a clifftop mansion worth four million dollars.

This contest is similar to the car contest, but much more involved with more room and opportunities for shenanigans. The rules are deceivingly simple: each contestant places one of their hands on a wall and, from there, they're free to roam and move around as much as they like as long as their hand continues to touch the house. Last person to let go wins the four million dollar mansion. Ryan is not the only one there to win the game and the CashSmashers team aren't above manipulating the contest, because "they need high drama, big twists, to make things viral."

So two days and several eliminations later, sleep deprivation, muscle cramp and lack of food begin to take toll, but Ryan and the remaining participants get really tested when one of them turns up apparently dead – lying next to the bag of money with a knife sticking out of him. Is it really a real murder or simply the CashSmashers stepping of their game now that the remaining contestants are vulnerable? They told them over the speakers to keep playing, but what if the body is real? But how can "you commit a murder unseen in a house full of cameras" where everyone's movement is restricted to the length of their arms?

The solution to the impossible stabbing does not disappoint. Not merely as a clever new wrinkle on the "invisible assailant" impossibility, but the cleverly-hidden, fairly clued and foreshadowed murderer complete with a very fitting motive. That's impressive considering Last One to Leave is basically short, tightly packed novella/short novel playing out like a tale of suspense, but framing the story and plot as a closely controlled, constantly surveillanced contest allowed Stevenson to play up/exploit both the suspense and puzzle elements simultaneously. A good example is how the characters refuse to take their hand off the wall when faced with emergencies and even a possible murder, which also helps to enforce the impossibility of their situation. And makes for one hell of an ending when Ryan exposes the murderer!

What I liked even more than the superb blending of suspense with an excellently played out impossible crime, is to get another fine example of a good, old-fashioned detective story with a gritty, contemporary setting, characters and motivation – fitted together as naturally as a dagger, stingy patriarch and a locked library. Last One to Leave was very reminiscent of A. Carver's The Dry Diver Drownings (2024) in that regard, in which a bunch of YouTubers chase clicks, but, instead of a crazy contest, it's about shooting a creepypasta video interrupted by several locked room murders. So glad to finally see these type of (locked room) mysteries appear in the West, because it's something I have come to associate with Japanese shin honkaku mystery writers and anime-and manga mysteries over the years. Yes, whether you like suspense and thrillers or the puzzle-oriented detective story and locked room puzzles, Stevenson's Last One to Leave has it all in a compact, well-paced story. One for the 2025 best-of list!

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).

Under Siege: "The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" (2000) by Edward D. Hoch

In 1995, Edward D. Hoch introduced a new character to his gallery of detectives, Alexander Swift, who's a civilian investigator and spy for General George Washington during the Revolutionary War – appearing in thirteen short stories between 1995 and 2007. Crippen & Landru collected the entire series under the title Constant Hearses and Other Revolutionary Stories (2022). I have not read anything from this series before, but one story was recommended, sometime, somewhere by someone, as an excellent historical impossible crime mystery. So decided to start as an appetizer to the series.

"The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" was first published in the December, 2000, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and takes place in September, 1781, "nearly a year since Benedict Arnold's treasonous attempt to surrender West Point to the British." General Washington received secret intelligence Benedict Arnold, now a general in the British army, has returned and is planning expedition somewhere in Connecticut to divert a part of the American army away from Washington's campaign in Virginia. Washington dispatches Swift to find out Arnold's exact plans and alert the militia in Connecticut.

That brings Swift to the city of New London, on the Thames River, defended by Fort Trumbull on the west bank and Fort Griswold on the eastern side of the river. Fort Griswold, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William Ledyard, is where Swift spends the night, but wakes up the next morning to the news "that British troops had landed under cover of darkness" and "were attacking on both sides of the harbor" – defenses were overwhelmed and eventually crumbled. Colonel Ledyard surrenders the fort and his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Potter, a Loyalist, who immediately plunged the sword into Ledyard's chest. Swift is together with the colonel's widow, two captains and two lieutenants the only survivors who now find themselves confined to guarded colonel's quarters.

Emily Ledyard demands her husband to be avenged, "one of you four, my husband's trusted officers, take revenge for his death by killing Colonel Potter by any means possible." She suggests the four draw straws, so none of them knows who really done it, which they do. Colonel Potter ends the day on the receiving end of a sword thrust, but the four officers were imprisoned together with Swift and Emily Ledyard when Potter was murdered. More pressingly than an apparent impossibility, Arnold telling he has to solve the murder because he intends to hang the murderer before departing. And if the murderer is not found before, they will all hang. So that's quite an incentive to play detective.

"The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" has a fantastic setup, plenty of historical drama and a few memorable scenes like the siege or the murder of Colonel Ledyard, but the plot is not one of Hoch's finest. I liked the idea of turning the locked-and guarded room inside to create an alibi that stands like a fortress, but found the explanation to be disappointingly unimaginative and second-rate. So, purely as a detective story or locked room mystery, "The Sword of Colonel Ledyard" came up short, but harmless as a fun, entertaining historical yarn.

Note for the curious: Mike Grost points out on his website that the Alexander Swift series can be read as an episodic novel as "the tales build on each other" to "form a united sequence, in some ways similar to a novel." So perhaps being chronologically challenged is the problem here.

Wilders Walk Away (1948) by Herbert Brean

Herbert Brean's debuted as a mystery writer with Wilders Walk Away (1948) and, according to Curt Evans, the praise it received from Anthony Boucher, critic and mystery writer, Brean "almost walked away with an Edgar" for best first novel – alongside with a cult status that lasted for decades. Wilders Walk Away was considered to be one of the great impossible crime novels not penned by John Dickson Carr. A reputation that wasn't tested too severely during the post-WWII decades as the traditional, Golden Age-style detective novels entered its dark age. That changed during the 2000s.

Wilders Walk Away remains out-of-print today, but used copies are neither ridiculously rare nor eye-watering expensive. When the internet began to offer a new, open market place copies of Wilders Walk Away began to circulate again and it's cult status began to unravel. Barry Ergang summed it up perfectly in his 2003 review posted on the GADWiki, "for a little while I thought I'd found in Wilders Walk Away a companion to The Three Coffins and Rim of the Pit for ultimate greatness." Somewhat of a shared experience as most of us were promised something like a Wrightsville mystery by Ellery Queen as perceived by Carr, centered on a series of miraculous vanishings across several centuries, but the explanations are disappointingly prosaic and mundane. Nor did the rediscovery of Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950), Brean's true masterpiece, do its reputation any favors.

So read it at the time anticipating an all-time great, unjustly out-of-print impossible crime classic and soured on the book when the impossible vanishings, generations and centuries apart, were explained away with plain, unimaginative solutions – which probably was too hasty a dismissal. Jim, of The Invisible Event, suggests in his 2017 review Wilders Walk Away is better read "as a prototype for the small town thriller" because it's "much more successful as that kind of book." I wanted to revisit Wilders Walks Away for some time now to see how the story lands without the high, somewhat unreasonable expectations of finding an impossible crime novel equal to the best from Carr and Hake Talbot.

The backdrop of Wilders Walk Away is the historical town of Wilders Lane, Vermont, whose history dates back to the mid-eighteenth century and named after the lane leading to old Ethan Wilder's log cabin. By 1775, a fairly sized village had grown around it that developed into the current town with the Wilders as its richest, leading family. There is, however, something curious about the Wilder family. Some of its members, through out the generations, have to habit of simply vanishing without a trace. Or, as it's locally known, they "walked away" never to be seen again.

Jonathan Wilder was the first to walk away, in '75, when going down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine, but his wife swears he never came back up again. There was no other way out of the cellar except going back up the stairs to the kitchen. Forty years later, Langdon Wilder disappeared from his bed and Walter Wilder was on the ill-fated Mary Celeste ("...people hereabouts think that whatever happened on the Celeste happened because Walter Wilder was aboard"). Wilders continued to walk away into the twentieth century. In 1917, John Michael Wilder was seen walking down a wet beach, before inexplicably vanishing from sight leaving nothing more than a trail of footprints, "plain as paint," stopping in the middle of the beach – "no concealment for yards around." Only the previous year, Fred Wilder disappeared from the supply room of his office under impossible circumstances on Columbus Day. These never-ceasing, strange and sometimes miraculously disappearances gave rise to a catchy jingle that became part of the folk lore of Wilders Lane:

 

"Other people die of mumps
Or general decay,
Of fever, chills or other ills,
But Wilders walk away."

 

In recent years, Wilders Lane has done a lot of work to restore the town to its colonial charm to attract tourists with families owning a Colonial house opening their homes to the public between two and five each afternoon. So visiting Wilders Lane was like a trip back in time to the days of the American Revolution. That brings Reynold Frame, a freelance writer and photographer, to Wilders Lane to do several picture pieces on the town, but soon finds consumed by everything Wilder. Particularly with the daughter of Fred Wilder, Constance, who, very much to Frame's horror, has a fiance. But there are other puzzling mysteries surrounding the Wilders and Wilders Lane. Such as a minor historical mystery, a hidden code, indicating where an old diary had been secreted away.

More importantly, Constance's sister, Ellen, disappeared shortly after Frame arrived in town and its him who eventually finds her, but that discovery turns a local legend into a full-blown murder investigation – first in the career of police chief Miles Maloney. Ellen is not the last of the Wilders to walk away and turn up dead, before the story draws to a close. Frame, "a faithful reader, and disciple, of Sherlock Holmes" is prompted to start playing detective to impress Constance, because she believes "someone else could do better than the police." The mysteries of the Wilder family not only involves strange disappearances and murder, but hidden treasure, skeletons and grave digging.

So, as you probably gathered, I enjoyed Wilders Walk Away a lot more the second time around and even got more out of the miraculous vanishings, especially the historical ones, out of this second read – even though they remain largely second-rate. A good example of the strength and weaknesses of these impossible disappearances is the 1775 vanishing of Jonathan Wilder from the windowless cellar with the exit under constant observation. The trick is old hat (n frperg cnffntrjnl), but why he never returned after disappearing has a great answer. So why they all vanished and who's responsible is more important here than how they disappeared, which always has a simple, unimpressive answer. I think Wilders Walk Away would have benefited from ditching the impossible nature of some of the disappearances in favor of their strangeness and habit of repeating themselves across generations. Frame even discusses the work of Charles Fort to explain to Constance that her family don't hold the patent on anomalous phenomena.

After all, "the idea that anyone can vanish off the face of the earth without leaving a trace is uncomfortable." Like the series of very odd, non-impossible disappearances from Freeman Wills Crofts' The Hog's Back Mystery (1933). The impossible disappearances in Wilders Walk Away were less of disappointment knowing before hand that the importance is on why they disappeared, and by whom, rather than how. So, understandably, its reputation cratered when locked room fanatics started getting their hands on it in 2000s.

Wilders Walk Away has more to offer than a string of very odd, inexplicable disappearances. Beside being a fun, old-fashioned whodunit presented as a small town thriller, something is to be said about its style and structure. Something I completely missed on my first read. In 1948, Wilders Walk Away represented a perfect blend of the genre's past and present with glimpses of the future (see Jim's prototype comment). Some all-important elements of the plot would have been very much at home in a Victorian melodrama or Conan Doyle story, but hardly a throwback considering how Brean handled the plot and the answers waiting at the end. Speaking of Doyle, Brean was a Sherlockian and every chapter is headed with a quote from the Sherlock Holmes canon and the story is littered with Van Dinean footnotes – ranging from historical information to a recipe for "easy to make" Jokers. It never tips over to being too much and is surprisingly subtle in how it balances it various plot-threads and characters. Far too subtle for what I demanded from my first read. But it earned a place among my favorite, non-impossible Golden Age detective novels.

So, yeah, Wilders Walk Away proved to be far better than I remembered from my first read and even better than I hoped it would be on rereading it. It's undeserved reputation as an impossible crime classic has done it no favors, but if you don't expect any "Carter Dickson-effects" from the vanishing-tricks, it's going to be difficult for Wilders Walk Away to disappoint. A tremendously fun and enjoyable romp that comes with a heartily recommendations. Just don't expect a fusion between Queen and Carr, but more something along the lines of Theodore Roscoe's Four Corners series and Jack Vance's two Sheriff Joe Bain novels.

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.

Visitors to the Isolated Island (2020) by Kie Houjou

Last year, Kie Houjou became one of my favorite mystery writers on the strength of two novels, Jikuu ryokousha no sunadokei (The Time Traveler's Hourglass, 2019) and Meitantei ni kanbi naru shi wo (Delicious Death for Detectives, 2022), which are respectively the first and third title in the "Ryuuzen Clan" series – translated by Mitsuda Madoy and "cosmiicnana." Technically, they're hybrid mysteries. The Time Traveler's Hourglass weaves time travel into an intricate, immaculately-plotted detective novel and Delicious Death for Detectives entrenched its plot in an immerse, futuristic Virtual Reality game. However, they're so very well done, well rounded and incredibly innovative mysteries, it would be more accurate to call them the detective series of tomorrow. I especially can see Delicious Death for Detectives becoming the classic detective novel from the first-half of this century (i.e. comparable to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, 1939).

I had a sneaking suspicion the second book in the series, Katou no raihousha (Visitors to the Isolated Island, 2020), could become my favorite. A suspicion that proved to be not far off the mark!

Kie Houjou's Visitors to the Isolated Island is the second title in the "Ryuuzen Clan" series, but Meister Hora only appears in the foreword to assure the reader that although "the events of the story seem absurd, there is no need for you to fear" as it will remain a detective story at heart ("I value fair play above all else"). Kamo Touma is only mentioned as the author of an article on the titular island in the Unsolved Mysteries magazine. Instead, the story focuses on Kamo's brother-in-law, Ryuuzen Yuki, who's the Assistant Director at J. Production en route to the lush, now uninhabited Kakuriyo Island to shoot a TV special for the World's Mysteries Detective Club show – which is going to spotlight the 1974 "Beast of Kakuriyo Island" incident. A mass murder robbing the island of the last of its last inhabitants.

Kakuriyo Island, "a perpetual summer paradise," actually consists two islands. A bigger, oval shaped island and a smaller tidal island, known as the Divine Land, which is connected to the main island during low tide when a gravel path appears. In 1974, the entire population (12), in addition to a visiting professor researching folklore, was wiped out in a single night with bodies found in different locations. All the victims had one thing in common: they had been stabbed in the heart by "a cone-shaped object." The police concluded the visiting scholar, Professor Sasakura, killed the islanders when caught digging up the cemetery looking for buried treasure. And died himself in a struggle with the last victim. Furthermore, the police believe the dogs kept on the island were responsible for savaging Professor Saskura's body. A conclusion that doesn't satisfy or hold up, as outlined in Kamo's article, but that's where the case stood for nearly half a century.

Fast forward to 2019, Yuki has come to Kakuriyo Island not only as the assistant director, but to get revenge for a friend whose death can be blamed on certain members of the production company.

However, Yuki plans to break with long-standing (shin) honkaku traditions by opting for practical methods rather than "crimes patterned on old legends or nursery rhymes and serial killings in villas," because locked room murders, fabricated alibis and other fictional crimes "were often useless in real life" – preferring to arouse as little suspicion and panic as possible. Only the appearance of a great detective, which is why invited a well-known researcher of subtropical ecosystems and detective fiction enthusiast, Motegi Shinji, to "reveal a false truth prepared by Yuki." So imagine his annoyance when one of his prospective victims is impossibly killed in a way mirroring the 1974 murders. Unno Nisaburo, the director, is found stabbed through the heart on top of a bush with only his muddy footprints leading to the spot.

So the plot, up till this point, still sounds fairly conventional shin honkaku mystery with the customary closed circle of characters stuck on an isolated island when a murderer begins leaving bodies in bizarre or impossible circumstances. It could describe the plot of Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987), MORI Hiroshi's Subete ga F ni naru (The Perfect Insider, 1996), NisiOisiN's Zaregoto series: kubikiri saikuru (Zaregoto, Book 1: The Kubikiri Cycle, 2002) or half the titles from The Kindaichi Case Files series. Not to forget Danro Kamosaki's recently reviewed Misshitsu kyouran jidai no satsujin – Zekkai no katou to nanatsu no trick (The Solitary Island in the Distant Sea and the Seven Tricks, 2022). Where Visitors to the Isolated Island begins to differ is when Yuki proves Sherlock Holmes' adage, "when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," correct. Yuki deduces from the circumstances in which the director was killed that "the so-called Beast of Kakuriyo Island actually exists." A creature not native to the island, our planet and perhaps not even from this reality!

 

 

Yuki's outlandish theory is quickly proven correct and places entirely new complexion on both their situation and that of the detective story. Now the problem is not trying to fit motive and opportunity to one of the suspects, but applying the art of deduction to unraveling the nature of the creature ("...so little information and so many unknowns..."). Where did it come from? What can it do? What are its limitations? How intelligent is it? How can they possibly protect themselves from it? One thing that's obvious from the start is the creature, called a Visitor, is halfway between a Chupacabra and a Skinwalker. It sucks living creatures, preferably humans, dry like a juice box. More disturbingly, it can take on the form of its victim in addition to some other distinctly non-human traits and abilities, but its “mimicry” poses a direct treat to the group. Visitor has the ability to replace someone in the group and this danger even extends to animals no smaller than a cat. So they not only have to find answers and trying to draw conclusions from the gathered information, but strategize in order to survive and prevent the Visitor from escaping the island.

A comparison can be drawn with the zombie hoard encircling the villa in Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017), but the Visitor presents the Yuki and the reader with a genuine, ultimate unknown – an intelligent, non-human interloper. An invasive species knocking humanity down a place on the food chain. And with every new discovery about the Visitor, it throws another complication on their various problems while the bodycount and suspicion steadily rises. So not exactly the same obstacle presented by the zombies from Death Among the Undead, but towards the end, the traits and abilities of the Visitors come into play when someone is bumped off while alone in a watched room with a dog guarding the hallway. Solutions to this impossible murder and Yuki's explanation twists and coils right up until the final pages with some wonderful, highly imaginative applications of the Visitor's abilities to the traditional, fair play detective story.

How fairly the game was played here is more impressive than how Kie Houjou handled the ultimate unknown within the confines of the traditional detective story. A good, non-spoilerish example is the coded message the original inhabitants left behind revealing the hiding place of a treasure trove of information on the Visitors. In my experience, Japanese code cracking stories, or subplots, rarely work in translation, but Yuki pointed out that "this code was made to be solved by a complete outsider to the island" – including the reader. Not only is the code 100% solvable, it's solution is a clue in itself. Houjou played it so fairly, she included two relatively short chapters from the perspective of the Visitor. I was, in fact, able to anticipate an important part of the solution without getting all the way. But it was fun trying to find my way in what's new territory for the detective story.

That's another noteworthy aspect of Visitors to the Isolated Island. It demonstrates why hybrid mysteries have become the next frontier for Japanese mystery writers. When done correctly, the hybrid mystery allows to break new ground and create new possibilities, while staying well within the framework of the classically-styled, fair play detective story. Visitors to the Isolated Island is a superb example of the fair play, hybrid mystery done right. Only drawback is how unrealistically perfect, almost dreamlike, all three novels are. Like a collective wish-fulfillment of detective fans come true!

So what else to say, except that The Time Traveler's Hourglass, Visitors to the Isolated Island and Delicious Death for Detectives deserve an official release in as many different languages as possible, because these three detective novels are going to be the classics of the 21st century. To quote Mitsuda Madoy, "they phenomenal, absolute masterpieces" and "boringly perfect" to boot. Highly recommended!

Note for the curious: yes, I know, I rambled on long enough, but something else I liked is how Visitors to the Isolated Island, an experimental hybrid mystery, embodies the past, present and future of the genre. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) was not only the first modern detective story and first official locked room mystery, but also the first hybrid mystery combining horror with a tale of ratiocination. A line can be drawn from Poe to this book and the direction the genre (in Japan) seems to be headed in the years ahead.

Boundary Reached: Q.E.D. vol. 50 by Motohiro Katou

I started reading Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. in 2018 and over the years, despite some prolonged hiatuses and ill-fated restarts, it not only became one of my favorite manga mystery series, but one of my favorite detective series in general – regardless of medium or form. A new kind of traditional detective story for the 21st century and should have finished it years ago, because you would think the locked downs from a few years ago would have helped. But no. Well, I promised to have this series done, dusted and in the books before summertime rolls around. And here we are with time to spare.

Fittingly, I'll end this run how it started with a single review of the last volume. The last two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 50 present not only a return to form, but feel like a return to the stories from the earlier volumes with one subtle little difference. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara look slightly older than they were at the beginning of the series.

The first story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Observation," draws on Sou Touma's time as a teenage prodigy at MIT where he met another young genius, Sally Blythe. Years later, she has become the head of a company manufacturing instruments for observational experiments, "Blythe Inc. is pretty famous," but her company is being targeted by, what can only be called, an invisible enemy – who carries out seemingly impossible acts of sabotage globally. Providing the story with some recognizable and famous backdrops. First stop is the Large Hadron Collider, on the border between France and Switzerland, where an unknown intruder switched switched off the flow of liquid helium forcing a shut down. However, the intruder was caught on the CCTV and surrounded by two groups guards inside the circular tunnel. When the two groups bumped into each other, the intruder simply had vanished without a trace! A second and similar act of sabotage occurred at the Mauna Kea Observatories, in Hawaii, where the cooling process was interrupted during an observational experiment. But how did the culprit managed to tamper with equipment that had been securely locked and sealed away for ten days? The saboteur strikes again at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan by placing radioactive radium ore beside an underground detector.

Sally Blythe turns to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to not only help figure out how the culprit managed to sabotage their experiments, but who's behind it all and why. So we get a nicely-layered, intelligently plotted detective story and human touch to the characterization. Not black and white or shades of gray as exemplified by the ending, which is neither a happy ending nor a depressingly dark conclusion. Just something human under less than ordinary circumstances. I really enjoyed the various impossible situations perhaps showing the influence of MORI Hiroshi and novels like Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996).

I think most of you already have a pretty good idea how the saboteur disappeared from the LHC. You would be particle partially correct, however, Katou pleasantly elaborated on that basic idea to create something more fitted for its special setting. The locked room-trick at the Mauna Kea Observatories is far more original, but not easily solvable for your average armchair detective. Even with a devious hint to its solution being dropped in your lap. Despite it being somewhat of a specialized locked room, I really liked it and appreciated its novelty. The sabotage at the Kamioka Observatory is not really a locked room problem, but serves another well-done purpose to the overall plot. So an all-round excellent opener to the final volume!

The second and last story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Escape," reads like a season finale adding thrills as frills to a good, old-fashioned and cleverly contrived locked room mystery.

"Escape" opens with a flashback, "16 years ago," to a warehouse used by an unnamed child as a secret hideout to read his favorite adventure series, Adventures of Brave, the Knight, but, one day, an intruder enters the barn – casually stringing up a body before leaving. This intruder leaves the barn locked from the inside with a padlock. The child disappears from the barn just as mysteriously, but not before taking the ring from the hanging body. So the police at the time are confronted with what appears to be a suicide inside a locked barn. So the case grew cold and was forgotten, until Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara receive an anonymous request and money to organize an Escape Room game. A game organized for the benefit of a small party made up of an ex-policeman, a fortune teller, a food sales executive, a mangaka (manga author) and a part timer.

All five received a personal invitation to take part in the game with an opportunity to win one million yen, but the mini-puzzles prove to be too cerebral for the participants. Suspicion rises when items like an old ring and a copy of Adventures of Brave, the Knight turn up in the game. And, eventually, the game becomes a dangerous one as they find themselves locked inside the labyrinth with a time bomb counting down the minutes they have left to escape. Even though it has been done before, the reason behind staging the escape game is still very clever indeed and wonderfully presented/executed through the escape game setup.

 

 

The solution to the locked room murder from 16 years ago deserves a special mention, because the trick offers something entirely new when it comes to impossible crimes in padlocked rooms or buildings. I'm sure I mentioned this somewhere before, quite recently, but the reason why padlocked rooms are even rarer than "taped tombs" is because padlocks are too unreliable, and too limited, for a proper locked room mystery. They're wide open to being picked, replaced or swapped around. So you won't find much scope or depth in the trickery in the, what, half a dozen known examples. That makes the locked room-trick here so refreshing and surprising, because it found a new way to get out of padlocked room.

I should also note here Touma has very little to do here, except help setting up the escape room and act as an impartial observer as the plot unfolds itself. Typical for this series to give its protagonist a passive role in its closing act. Nothing to detract from this splendid and fun locked room thriller. So, overall, a very strong volume to end this series on. Somewhat of an open ending, perhaps, to the series and characters, but this is, of course, not the end of the road for Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara – both of whom will return in Q.E.D. iff. I look forward to digging into that series, but first have to begin slapping together part two of "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. Vol. 1-25." I'll probably take a palate cleanser before returning to C.M.B. and starting on Q.E.D. iff, which might even include a return to The Kindaichi Case Files. Stay tuned!

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.

Fear Stalks the Village (1932) by Ethel Lina White

Ethel Lina White was a British writer from Abergavenny, Wales, who started out writing short stories and mainstream novels, before not unsuccessfully trying her hands at crime fiction with Some Must Watch (1933) and The Wheel Spins (1936) earning her some lasting fame – which were both turned into popular movies. The Wheel Spins was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes. So her work tends to be linked to the atmospheric, character-driven suspense mysteries of American writers like Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mignon G. Eberhart and Mabel Seeley. Robert Adey even listed two of White's novels in Locked Room Murders (1991).

So you would think White's contributions to the impossible crime genre was going to be my first stop, but have been rather curious about one of her lesser-known, non-impossible crime mystery novels.

Last year, the British Library reprinted White's Fear Stalks the Village (1932) as part of their ongoing Crime Classics series. Martin Edwards wrote a short, but insightful, introduction describing the book as an early example of the poison pen letter depicting "the slow, remorseless destruction of bonds of trust and affection between the villagers" – complimented by "a pleasing slow-burn puzzle." I've read some good things about Fear Stalks the Village and the reprint was favorably received, which made the top 10 of the 2024 Reprint of the Year Award. It certainly is one of the most striking of the 1930s village mysteries.

The village in question is a remote, out of the way place with no railway connection, but the flower gardens, honeysuckle-twined lanes, cobbled streets lined with Tudor cottages makes it a small slice of heaven. It's said that "even Death seldom knocked at its doors, for the natives resented the mere idea of dying in such a delightful place." So a place where visitors become residents over time, but a snake has slithered into this garden paradise. A snake of the venomous variety who spreads its poison through anonymous letters.

Miss Decima Asprey, elderly spinster and queen of the village, is the first to receive an anonymous poison pen letter attacking her moral character. She shares it with the village priest and it was supposed to be kept between them, but they were overheard by the parlor maid. And, within a day, it was public knowledge Miss Asprey had received a poison pen letter slandering her character. The first to fall under suspicion is the local writer of schoolboy adventure serials, Miss Julia Corner, who's first garden party of the season ends disastrous when she brings up the anonymous letter. Miss Corner was the first to experience the "social frost" as invitations for tea or garden parties stopped coming, which made the initial fear and suspicion subside – until a second poison pen letter is delivered. Followed by a tragic death and an inquest. So the Reverend Simon Blake calls in his friend, Ignatius Brown, who's "one of the idle rich" and "rather fancies himself as Sherlock Holmes" to do a bit of sleuthing.

Ignatius Brown arrives in the village to witness firsthand how the atmosphere of fear, suspicion and a morbid dread of scandal has on the social fabric of village life. Everyone is suspicious of their own neighbor. Social gatherings come to a grinding halt "as though they knew subconsciously that so long as they did not gather together in numbers they were safe from the herd-instinct to panic at a chance shot." This is slow-burn suspense mystery and Brown is not able to prevent more tragedies from happening as the village continues to unravel, before he can put a stop to the "secret sadist" terrorizing a once nearly fairytale-like village.

However, while there are a number of deaths, White boldly decided to make this 1932 mystery novel completely murderless. Fear Stalks the Village focuses entirely on the poison pen letters and their corrosive effect on not only their recipients, but on the village community as a whole. So this village mystery is more about the salting and poisoning of the social strata of a small, isolated village sparring nobody than the effects of a murder of an individual on a close-knit community. Fear Stalks the Village is something off the beaten path for an early 1930s village mystery, which had only just began to emerge and perhaps the reason why it reads like a book written decades later. Shirley Jackson's short poison pen story, "The Possibility of Evil" (1965), comes to mind. That's also reflected in the ending.

Fear Stalks the Village is, as noted before, a very slow-moving story taking place under lazy summer sun or "flushed in sunset afterglow" as the anonymous letter writer slowly poisons the village – one letter at a time. Something you can only get away with when there's a worthy payoff at the end and White delivered as Brown revealed there was more complexity behind how the poison pen letters started. That earned it a status as an oddly cut gem of the British village mystery. On the other hand, Brown can only prevent further damage and precious little to get justice for the people who took their own life. Whatever the ending suggested, it's unlikely the end of the poison pen letters restored the village to its previous state.

Fear Stalks the Village is one of the most unusual, leisurely-paced, but strangely mesmerizing, mystery thrillers from the British Golden Age. Recommended as something pleasantly different. But let the reader be warned... if you want your detective story to get on with it and present a clearly murdered corpse in the first couple of chapters, you're best advised to give this one a pass.