The First Television Murder (1940) by Val Gielgud and Eric Maschwitz

Val Gielgud, an actor, director and broadcaster, was a pioneer of radio-and television drama at the BBC and served as head for both their drama departments – even directing the first ever drama for British television. Gielgud had a side hustle, writing detective and thriller novels, producing a respectable body of work from 1931 to 1975. I suppose his best known work today are his two collaborations with John Dickson Carr, collected in 13 to the Gallows (2008), but used to be better known for collaborating with another friend on a series of detective novels. 

Between 1933 and 1940, Gielgud worked on five Inspector Simon Spears novels with close friend and then former deputy editor of the Radio Times, Eric Maschwitz, who also wrote under the name "Holt Marvell." Three of the novels, Death at Broadcasting House (1934), Death as an Extra (1935) and The First Television Murder (1940), draw on their firsthand experience working behind the scenes of early radio and television. They have been out-of-print for ages and consequently all but forgotten today, which even without having read them always baffled me. Here you have a trio of mysteries taking place in the world of early radio and television, written by insiders, giving them at least an historical excuse to justify a reprint every now and then. Nope.

So have always been interested in Gielgud's early, media centered mysteries, notably The First Television Murder, because the title is no exaggeration. Prior to it, television sets only rarely turned up in detective stories as a background novelty (e.g. E.R. Punshon's The Bath Mysteries, 1936). The First Television Murder predates Pat McGerr's Death in a Million Living Room (1951) by more than a decade. I was very curious to see how Gielgud could do with television this early in the game.

Gielgud and Maschwitz's The First Television Murder, also published simply as The Television Murder, begins when Mr. Winthrop Bruce, the BBC Television Director, receiving a request to show Gloria van Zuyl around Alexandra Palace – where "the Television Service lived and moved." Gloria van Zuyl, known to the general public as "The Twenty Million Dollar Girl," is a rich heiress who's to receive a fortune upon the death of her bedridden grandfather, Abraham van Zuyl. She married an Italian nobleman, Count Benito Ferrari. And, recently, she purchased a "phenomenal ruby" called "The Peacock Throne" said to be cursed. The last owner, Van Zeeland, "died curiously, too, in Amsterdam" on the day he received the ruby. Bruce is not too keen to guide people around the studios "as though it were the Zoo on Bank Holiday," but couldn't turn down this request. However, the tour is a great success and Gloria even does a test screening on closed circuit. A test screening that goes so well, she's offered to be interviewed on the weekly program Picture Parade.

Gloria at first turns down the offer, but has second thoughts and accepts to be televised. It should be mentioned that between the opening chapter and Gloria's televised interview, the eternal triangle is established as Gloria is not a happily married woman and has a friend, David Calthrop, who's very interested in seeing her happy. So guess how that ends! While she's being interviewed on live television, Count Ferrari is shot and killed at their home and scene confronting Inspector Spears could have figured in one of John Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell novels.

The shooting took place in Abraham van Zuyl's bedroom. The butler had heard, what he believed to be, was a car backfiring followed by the ringing of the bell at Van Zuyl's bedside. What the butler discovered was Count Ferrari, shot through the heart, lying on the floor of the bedroom with a small automatic pistol beside the body and Van Zuyl lay collapsed in the bed – shock causing "a paralytic stroke of the most serious kind." So is unable to tell them what, exactly happened, but the scene gets stranger. Count Ferrari is clutching a tube of lipstick which he used to scribble the letter "CA" on the wainscoting and the Count had an argument with Calthrop right before the televised show began. But that possibility is thrown for a loop when fingerprints found on the pistol are identified as belonging to Gloria van Zuyl!

So there's a prize suspects, who confessed going "to the house with the express intention of having a showdown" and "admits to being there until after the Countess first appeared on the Television screen," implicated by the victim's unfinished dying message. This simple, straightforward case against Calthrop collapses by the clear, tidy prints on the murder weapon belonging to Gloria. She can't possibly have fired the shot, because "she was five or six miles away, at Alexandra Palace, appearing in front of a Television camera, with about half a million witnesses to prove it." On top of that, the ruby has disappeared. Spears has his work cut out for him with this "stark raving impossibility."

I should mention here that the various characters working at the television studio remain involved in the investigation ("one day Spears would get into trouble for carting interested amateurs around with him"). From what I gathered, some also figured in Death at Broadcasting House and Death in Budapest (1937). The backstage snapshots of early, 1940s television is one of the main draws like the brief look at the big green O.B. (Outside Broadcast) Van with its mass of cables going from the van, cameras to some distant power supply – a sight new enough to draw a crowd to see television-in-action. In 1940, the medium of television was still in its experimental phase and was suspended in Britain for the duration of World War II. So placing a television broadcast central to the plot gives this detective story something of character, or personality, of its own. I can imagine the scenes related to the broadcast and its technicalities might have impressed readers as something out of H.G. Well rather than a good, old-fashioned detective novel. I also appreciated the unexpected excursion to my country, because Spears is convinced there's a link there with the murder ("...I'll lay you a hundred Dutch guilders to a Black Tulip...").

So it really is a pity the television background and trip to the Netherlands (for me) are what lifted The First Television Murder ever so slightly above average, second-tier mystery novel. Gielgud and Maschwitz were not incompetent plotters, but showed no imagination when it came to the bare bones of the plot and solution. Despite the tangled, knotted appearance of the impossible shooting, the solution is ridiculously basic to the point I shouldn't be tagging this review as a locked room mystery, but I'm not having that discussion again. It doesn't help that the solution packs, what's essentially, a double anticlimax that left me wondering what Carr could have done with this story. Sorry for nosediving this review in the end, but blame the authors for writing a historical curiosity instead of a historical curiosity that's also a first-rate mystery. If you're only interested in a good detective story, you shouldn't give The First Television Murder your top priority, but, for a historical first, it's well worth a read.

Blind Man's Buff (1933) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements

Back in March, I reviewed Fear of Fear (1931) by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements, a husband-and-wife writing team, who collaborated on novels, short stories, plays and movie scripts – notably several movie adaptations of S.S. van Dine's Philo Vance mysteries. Ryerson and Clements wrote a handful of detective and thrillers themselves, published between 1930 and 1937, starring playwright and amateur sleuth Jimmy Lane. Their detective novels had been out-of-print for nearly a century, until Coachwhip Publications reprinted two of the Jimmy Lane novels and the standalone mystery-thriller The Borgia Blade (1937).

I was interested in Fear of Fear ever since coming across it in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but the story and plot has more to like than just a well-handled impossible crime. A must-read for fans of the Van Dinean detective story and writers like Clyde B. Clason and Roger Scarlett. So picked up the reprint of Blind Man's Buff (1933).

Ryerson and Clements' Blind Man's Buff takes a different track by moving away from the brownstones and mansions that usually provide a backdrop for these Van Dinean detective novels. Instead, the story brings Jimmy Lane and his chronicler, Philip Carter, to Sycamore Island in New York – private domain of the Conroy clan. Lane and Lucia Conroy, a rising novelist, were working on a stage adaptation of one of her novels when she dropped their work to announce she has to leave for a month. A short while later, Lane receives a telegram from Lucia imploring him to come to Sycamore Island and bring "Northwest Mounted." Lane's nickname for Carter dating back to their college days. So it must be serious!

When they arrive, Lucia seems fine and tries to dismiss the telegram as a ploy to lure them away for a much deserved holiday. However, Lucia quickly admits to Lane she had reason to suspect her cousin Sally had been murdered the previous year.

Sycamore Island was the property of the late family patriarch, Nathan Conroy, who's tomb stands on top of the hill overlooking the Conroy home below. Nathan Conroy's slightly peculiar will shackled the Conroys to the island as the prospective legatees are required to spend "the month between September fifteenth and October fifteenth out of every year" on the island. At the end of the ten year period, Nathan's property and fortune will be divided among the surviving legatees. Last year, on their ninth reunion, Sally dies on the veranda after drinking tea-punch dosed with chloral hydrate. Sally's death was dismissed as a suicide, but this year, Lucia "discovers a note scribbled on the fly-leaf of the book she was reading the afternoon of her death" reading "MURDERED." Dr. Mark Dietrich, Sally's brother, convinced Lucia the note was written while she was in a delirium. Lane and Carter remain suspicion, which is why they decide to stay on. And, of course, murder is in the offing. But what happens before is just as fascinating. Not only for its introduction of the eccentric family full of "brilliance and charm."

First of all, let's get the family out of the way first (is what the murderer said). There is Lucia's drinking twin brother Lee and her fiance/adopted cousin, Douglas, who's a broker and sports fan. Dr. Dietrich's wife, Connie, who flirts with their Italian cousin, Count Roberto Patri. Tony Patri is half-brother and came along for the ride. Judith Conroy is their aunt and Hagar Conroy is their batty, mystery loving great-aunt. Finally, there's the grotesque caretaker, Henry Harker, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Prill, who both have a stake in the inheritance question. So, en route to the first murder, the topic of detective stories and fair play comes up.

Great-aunt Hagar has a temper tantrum over a mystery novel she has been reading, "swindling cheat," which amused everyone as "this was by no means the first time she had burst out." She had been reading a mystery in which a man is shot on page 12 and "along about a hundred and forty you're told the murdered man once had a brother who quarreled with him and went to Borneo in 1885," only to arrive "on page three hundred and fourteen" to "discover he did the killing" – basically robbing the reader of his time and money ("...writers oughtn't to be allowed to cheat like that"). So they have a spirited debate about fair play in detective stories ("all I ask is that the murderer be prominent in the story"), suggesting an International Code for Detective Fiction ("...death penalty for infringement") and agree to do a short story contest. Everyone is to write a short story following the agreed upon code of conduct to be submitted before eight the following night.

So, the next night, the short story contest is preceded by a game of blind man's buff while a storm was brewing outside. A not unimportant link in the chain of events, which becomes clear when they get to the stories. There's an extra, tenth story in the pile titled "Murder in the Conroy Clan" describing the gruesome murder of Roberto Patri. According to the story, Roberto's body will be found, hands and feet tied, lying on the floor of the breakfast room "shirt covered in blood" with "a gaping wound in his throat" and "a gory knife at his feet." The scene described in the story is exactly what they find when they go to investigate the breakfast room. And, of course, the raging storm cuts them off from the outside world for the next day or two. However, isolating the small island here is not merely a convenient plot-device to create a very tight, closed-circle situation without any possible outside meddling. More on that in a moment.

Jimmy Lane and Philip Carter, once again, have to play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but even the brilliant Lane is struggling with the multitude of puzzling aspects, possibilities and rising body count. Who wrote that tenth short story? Why was Roberto wearing Tony's torn, stained shirt? What is the connection between Roberto's murder and Sally's presumed suicide? Who wore the slicker? What happened to the dog, Truffles, when he briefly disappeared without a trace from the tiny island? Lane tries to take a strictly logical approach to these countless problems and demonstrates a pleasing ability to consider ideas that are the extreme opposite of each other. At one point, Lane compares himself with "a scientist in a laboratory who has a culture containing a thousand different germs and knows that one of them is responsible for a disease," only "by a process of elimination that he can find the culprit." This cold, clinical and logical approach is hampered by the murderer keeping a steady pace. Every murder is preceded by the discovery of a new, short chapter "Murder in the Conroy Clan" identifying the next victim. Curiously, this leads to several locked rooms and impossible crimes being teased, but never executed or immediately dispelled. Like the snoring corpse! Not that Blind Man's Buff needed any locked room murders or impossible poisonings as it has more than enough going for itself. Most has been barely touched upon or mentioned in this review. You can discover that for yourself.

So, there are a few things that stand out, having now read Fear of Fear and Blind Man's Buff. Firstly, Ryerson and Clements clearly understood what makes a detective story tick giving particularly this novel an Ellery Queen-like, meta-fictional quality (c.f. The Greek Coffin Mystery, 1932). I suspect EQ was in their mind when plotting and writing Blind Man's Buff. Lane even winked "A Challenge to the Reader" when telling Carter, "you're in possession of every fact" and "seen every clew" needed to come to the same conclusion. Blind Man's Buff could have just as easily been titled The Italian Shirt Mystery. More importantly, Ryerson and Clements had a knack for inconspicuously hiding their murderers among a small cast of characters. Neither the murderer from Fear of Fear nor the one from this novel had any right to be this inconspicuous. I eventually cottoned on the murderer, but even then had some things incorrect or not exactly correct. Either way, I had fun trying to put all the pieces together myself and got pretty far, before the final chapters rolled around. So, purely as a whodunit, Blind Man's Buff can more than hold its own against its contemporaries, but one aspect pushed it to be something more than a solid round of the Grandest Game in the World.

What earned Blind Man's Buff the status of minor classic, arguably one of the best stuck-on-a-island mysteries from the period, is the secret of the island itself and how it relates to Nathan Conroy's strange will. Now that's (ROT13) nccylvat gur neg bs zheqre gb pbzcyrgr, hggre znqarff. Honestly, something I have come to expect from Japanese mystery writers of today rather than from a good, old-fashioned Golden Age detective novel from the Van Dine-Queen School. I can recommend Blind Man's Buff for that part alone with the detective story surrounding it being quality bonus content. So, hopefully, Coachwhip decides to followup their 2023 reprints with reprints of the remaining two Jimmy Lane mysteries, Seven Suspects (1930) and Shadows (1934).

Murder in the Air (1931) by Darwin L. Teilhet

Darwin L. Teilhet was an American journalist, advertising executive, screenwriter and novelist who started out as a mystery writer, authoring seven detective novels from 1931 to 1940, four of which forming a short-lived series – featuring the irrepressible, slightly unhinged Baron von Kaz. Hildegarde Teilhet co-wrote three of the brave Von Kaz novels, but her husband began his literary career with three standalone mysteries.

The most notable, best remembered of Teilhet's trio of non-series mysteries is the prescient The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934), which takes place in Germany when the Nazis rose to power. It has the distinction of arguably being the first ever World War II detective novel beating Theodore Roscoe's I'll Grind Their Bones (1936) by two years. A big reason why it was reprinted in 1985 by Polygonics. Death Flies High (1931) and Murder in the Air (1931), a pair of aviation-themed mysteries, aren't as well remembered today, but that can be put down to neither having ever received a reprint. So, you can say they flew under our collective radars. Murder in the Air is an interesting case as it's not only an impossible crime novel listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but the central impossibility is based on a famous, real-life disappearance from the late 1920s. More on that aspect in a moment.

Murder in the Air opens with Peter Blue, a reporter for the Paris Journal, getting fired by editor, Henry Jackson, because he has "muffed every good story" given to him. Just when is ready to leave, the telephone rings with bombshell news. Dr. von Dolbenstein, "biggest financier in Europe," vanished from his tri-motored, Rhorbach monoplane while it was flying five thousand feet above the English Channel. There were five other passengers, not including the pilot and navigator, who saw Von Dolbenstein go into the lavatory alone and not coming back – no answers to their calls or knocks. So they broke down the door only to discover Dr. von Dolbenstein has vanished into thin air! What followed was a search of the small plane from cockpit to tail-end without finding a trace. They even tried to open the cabin door, to see if he might have accidentally fallen out, but "the blast of wind from the propellers was too strong" ("we couldn't budge it"). Only thing they can do is radio the police that a well-known, influential financier known on two continents has inexplicably gone missing from a sealed airplane in mid flight.

So, if this situation sounds vaguely familiar, the "fantastic disappearance" of Von Dolbenstein was based on a notorious, real-life disappearance under very similar circumstances. On July 4, 1928, the Belgian financier Alfred Loewenstein, third richest man in the world at the time, flew from Croydon to Brussels on his private air plane with a group of six people. They reported seeing Loewenstein going to the lavatory and not returning. Only difference is that when they checked the lavatory, they found the entrance door open and it was assumed Loewenstein had accidentally plunged to his death. However, the official reading didn't stop the speculations and conspiracy theories. Teilhet's Murder in the Air probably was the first fictionalized take on the case, but not the last as you might also be reminded of Franco Vailati's Il mistero dell'idrovolante (The Flying Boat Mystery, 1935) and Helen McCloy's short story "The Case of the Duplicate Door" (1949) collected in The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr. Basil Willing (2003).

Back to Peter Blue and Henry Jackson. When news arrives, Jackson has no reporters on hand and dispatches Blue to the airport to report on, what could be, the biggest breaking story of the decade. Blue, as the on-the-ground reporter, learns the other passengers consisted of Von Dolbenstein's two secretaries, Frederick von Stallf and Miss Geraldine "Jerry" Howard, two other well-known financiers, Harvey Gerbé and Sir William Wallace, and a former secretary, John Carson – who forced his way onto the plane before it took off. Lastly, the pilot and navigator, Clarence Pierce and Erich Rask. Blue also learns there's another layer to the seemingly impossible disappearance as "a cordon of men surged around the monoplane even before its wheels had bounced on the ground" ensuring Von Dolbenstein couldn't have been hiding on the outside, dropped off and escaped. Shortly following the disappearance, the man who called in the tip to Jackson is murdered in one of the hangars. And the victim left behind a dying message suggesting a link with the disappearance mystery.

However, this murder is of peripheral importance to the story and plot as it's barely mentioned again until towards the end. The story that follows is more of a medium boiled, almost pulp-style mystery with the plucky, elusive Miss Howard and the hardboiled John Carston giving him the most trouble, which comes with plenty of physical altercations. For example, the fifth chapter opens with a bandaged Blue waking up in a hospital bed.

Beside a couple of unruly suspects, Blue also has to deal with George St. Armand, the newly appointed Chef de la Sûreté, who's convinced Carson and Miss Howard are behind the disappearance ("they are two of the most infamous criminals"). Much to Blue's dismay who has become very interested in Miss Howard and somewhat confused why she's protecting Carson. There is, of course, the inexplicable mystery of Von Dolbenstein's disappearance from an airplane and the trouble his disappearance is causing. Before he disappeared, Von Dolbenstein was ready to market a new technical marvel, "a new, secret Diesel airplane," but the plans vanished alongside the financier. So the investors are ruined and a newspaper report how "the crash of the von Dolbenstein bubble" has already resulted in two suicides.

I have mentioned on this blog before how the "financial wizards" of the early 20th century took over the role of popular villains and ready-made, murderable victims from blackmailers in detective fiction following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 – e.g. The Mystery on the Channel (1931) by Freeman Wills Crofts. Murder in the Air is another example, but with a slight twist bringing me to the solution.

Murder in the Air is Teilhet's first stab at the detective story, a stab full of energy and enthusiasm, but a still inexperience hand at plotting reveals itself in the solution. First of all, Teilhet made a capital mistake confirming my initial suspicion was spot on. What was that mistake (HUGE SPOILER/ROT13): gur bcravat abgrq gur qbbe bs gur yningbel jnf ybpxrq naq unq gb or oebxra qbja, ohg gung ybpxrq qbbe jnf arire zragvbarq be pbafvqrerq ntnva nf n cneg bs guvf zhygvynlrerq ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel. Jul? Orpnhfr gur ybpxrq qbbe cynlrq ab cneg va gur fbyhgvba. Fb gur svanapvre unq gb unir unq n unaq va uvf bja qvfnccrnenapr. So that brought me halfway towards the correct solution, but muddled the method a little as I considered something a little different. Something silly that was rightfully mocked in the story itself. Teilhet deserves credit, given the limited scope the situation allows for locked room trickery, for not going full pulp and trying to deliver a somewhat detective-worthy solution to the impossible disappearance. The trick is a rather involved one, but not overly convoluted, but undeniably marred by (SPOILER/ROT13) qrcraqvat ba zhygvcyr pb-pbafcvengbef naq nppbzcyvprf. Jung vf guvf... na rcvfbqr bs Wbanguna Perrx? On the upside, while the dying message is only a small part of the plot, its solution shines with brilliant simplicity. It simply stands out against the involved vanishing-trick.

So, all in all, Murder in the Air is a diamond-in-the-rough written and plotted around the central idea of how a man can disappear from an airplane, but how that idea was executed caused the plot to experience some turbulence. Other than the rough patches on the plot, Murder in the Air is highly readable, fast-paced medium boiled mystery-thriller with pulp leanings and full of promise Teilhet would deliver on in future novels. It made me curious about Teilhet's second novel and aviation mystery, Death Flies High, which looks to be a classic, closed circle whodunit aboard a transatlantic flying boat. On the wishlist it goes!

Murder in the Tomb (1937) by Lucian Austin Osgood

Over the years, I picked up a curious collection of so-called genre curiosities, alternative classics and a couple of neglected gems along the trail of obscure, largely forgotten and out-of-print detective novels, but sometimes you find one hiding in plain sight – sporting a surprisingly up-to-date print status. Subject of today's review has been back in print for the past ten years and nobody has reviewed or even mentioned it. Not even an acknowledgment of its existence.

Back in 2016, Coachwhip reprinted Lucian Austin Osgood's Murder in the Tomb (1937) and going by the plot description on the back, you can't be blamed for assuming the book is a historical mystery with a Golden Age setting ("...by a newcomer in the field... set in the city of Minneapolis during the summer of 1932"). Murder in the Tomb was originally published in 1937 and Osgood, an American professor of English, had bigger ambitions than his one piece of now forgotten detective fiction suggests.

Murder in the Tomb was published by Unique Mystery Novels of Columbus, Mississippi, which appears to have been their first and only publication. However, the introduction, of the Coachwhip edition, mentions the back cover of the original edition announced Osgood's The Ghost of Dr. Arnette and Death by Candle Light as forthcoming. It also listed I Wish You Glad Tomorrow and Heloise by one Robert Grayle ("...a complete mystery"). So it's possible Unique Mystery Novels "may very well have been a self-publishing venture by Osgood." If it was a self-publishing project, I guess not enough copies of Murder in the Tomb were moved to make printing The Ghost of Dr. Arnette, Death by Candle Light and the two Grayle novels financial viable – adding four titles to that already too long list of lost detective fiction. The introduction unfortunately doesn't mention how Osgood's Murder in the Tomb came to their attention or how they got hold of a copy to reprint, because not many copies appear to have been in circulation. Whatever lead to its reprinting, Osgood produced a mystery novel that can certainly be called unique for its time.

I hardly know where to begin, knowing where it ends and how it got there. The story is told by Winston West, currently in the employ of Howard Ralston, who recently returned from accompanying his boss abroad to Ralston's home, called Windermere, on Park Avenue. Windermere is the twin of the house next door, Fontainebleau, connected through a porte-cochere "above which was a glassed-in hallway that permitted easy communication" between the two houses. Ralston's next door neighbor and owner of Fontainebleau is his business partner, M. Henri Cornier ("...owned an entire city block"). Cornier is the reason for their trip abroad. Ralston had told Cornier about his intention to collect three prizes, a Borgia poison ring, a Chinese vengeance dagger and the mummy of Serapion ("...terrible founder of the still more terrible Brothers of Karnak"). Three rare, near impossible to obtain, potentially dangerous items to possess. Cornier scoffs at Ralston's plan leading to a fifty thousand dollar wager between the two.

Several months later, Ralston and West return with the ring, dagger and mummy, but those "three menaces" were not obtained fairly and trouble begins knocking at their door.

Firstly, the Chinese vengeance dagger belongs to the Scarlet Dragons, "an organization said to still function in China," who have been sending notes pressing for the return of the dagger or suffer the consequences. Secondly, the surviving Brothers of Karnak expressed similar wishes and death threats regarding their stolen mummy. Although their threats have a supernatural flavor ("...summon the ka out of that mummy to punish you with horrible death"). Thirdly, Ralston "borrowed" the Borgia ring from the Duke of Vedena by swapping it with a replica during a visit. A replica made by his new protege and skilled artificer, Pietro Martini, who has also become a member of the Windermere household – complete with a mention in his mentor's will. Duke of Vedena and a Lucretia Lansing, an agent for antiquarians, turned up at Windermere to demand the return of the ring, but without much success. Than there's the domestic troubles and tension. Ralston is engaged to the much younger daughter of his late friend, Mildred Manning, who has fallen in love with Ralston's son, Paul. More than enough to set the stage for murder!

So far, Murder in the Tomb sounds fairly conventional even with pulp material already cluttering the early stages of the story and plot, but then murder happens. And things start to get really weird.

Ralston's collection, including the three menaces, is locked away in a secure, high tech room referred to as "the tomb." A push of the button can hermetically seal the room with solid steel sheets sliding down to cover every door and window. During the night, while the house is rocked by a thunderstorm, Ralston goes to the tomb to challenge the curse of the mummy, but West has also gone to the tomb. What he witnesses can be at first taken as a nightmare scene or hallucination, "the lid of the mummy case swung slowly outward" and "stiffly old Serapion stepped forth" shooting "a ghostly green ray straight at Ralston's heart" from "a fleshless finger." The confusing doesn't end there, but it ends with a dying Ralston, vengeance dagger sticking out of his back, and unconscious West lying on the floor. When he regains consciousness, West is told Ralston's body and the mummy vanished from the tomb!

Well, the impossibilities, or locked room problems, aren't as clearly stated or half as obvious as my description suggests. Osgood and Murder in the Tomb have this weird love/hate relationship with the cliches and tropes of the detective story and pulp thrillers, simultaneously embracing them and trying to keep them at arm length. Osgood tends to talk, or write, around them and that doesn't always make for the clearest way to tell and plot a detective story. For example, the tomb and the twin houses have several secret passages and hidden doorways that aren't as secret or hidden as they should be, but the problem of timing and opportunity remains (I think). So the only true impossibility standing is old Serapion acting like a prop from a 1980s science-fiction flick coming back to life (I think). But more on him in a moment.

The investigation into this murder, disappearing corpses and hallucination witnesses is as unusual as the crimes themselves parred excellently with two relatively grounded detectives. Detective Hal Denny and Ben Bailey revel in the role of dumb, flatfooted cop and clever, cunning amateur with Bailey even being called a “college sleuth” by one of the characters – which is an interesting phrase to use in a 1930s mystery novel. A high school detective or college sleuth is something that has become synonymous in my mind with the Japanese detective story. Denny and Bailey playing rival detectives is arguably the best part of the book as they're not always playing nice which gives their rivalry a bite.

The bizarre twists, out-of-nowhere turns and other complications keep them busy enough like a mass poisoning incident when someone decides to sling various kinds of poison around the place. One of the people left incapacitated is behind a bolted door and its discovery is setup as another locked room crime, but that ended as soon as the door was broken down. Like I said, the whole story has this really weird love/hate relationship with its tropes.

So, as you probably gathered, I started to become a little bit skeptical during the second-half, but the unusual treatment of its tropes gave me hope. I hoped Murder in the Tomb would turn out to be one of those detective novels where you started to wonder how the author was going to pull it all together, only to show at the end everything had gone according to plan. You know, the Ton Vervoort approach to writing and plotting detective fiction. It was either going to be a so-called alternative classic or fall to pieces at the end. Yes, regrettably, Murder in the Tomb fell to pieces in a glorious, almost incomprehensible and, to be honest, impressive mess.

I'm not sure how everything happened, because how incredibly convoluted the solution turned out to be, but several things stood out. Firstly, Osgood employed an unusual, horrendously botched take on (SPOILER/ROT13) gur oveyfgbar tnzovg va juvpu gur cerfhzrq ivpgvz jnf fgvyy gur ivpgvz ybpxrq njnl va n uvqqra ebbz. Secondly, the (ROT13) ahzore bs crbcyr jub raqrq hc orvat vafvqr gur urezrgvpnyyl frnyrq gbzo ng gur gvzr bs gur zheqre. Jr fzvex ng zlfgrevrf sebz gjragvrf sbe univat pevzr fprarf erfrzoyvat n ohfl gubebhtusner, ohg guvf jnf whfg havagraqrq pbzrql. Thirdly, Bailey casually explaining the mummy attack in the tomb (ROT13: “Whfg n ebobg, gung'f nyy”).

So, yeah, the story shot itself to pieces at the end, but the mess honestly is impressive to behold. There was promise and some potential during the opening stages offering several directions Osgood could have taken into. After a few rounds the block, Osgood choose to just drive the whole thing off a cliff.

What more can I say? Osgood seems to have had good intentions, wanting to create a genuinely unique, baffling mystery novel, but sadly lacked the skills or talent to execute an ambitiously imagined plot like this one. In a perfect world, Osgood's Murder in a Tomb would have ended being a companion piece to Hake Talbot and Theodore Roscoe's impossible crime fiction and getting compared to John Dickson Carr and Paul Halter, but we're not in that world. So we have to do with this genre curiosity. Not recommended, unless you have an interest in obscure or alternative mysteries.

The Double Turn (1956) by Carol Carnac

Last year, the British Library Crime Classics reprinted E.C.R. Lorac's Murder As a Fine Art (1953), published as by "Carol Carnac," which proved to be an excellent accessory to their run of Lorac reprints with an unusual plot and memorable impossible crime – bringing brutalism to the fine art of murder. So was pleased when they announced a reprint of the Carol Carnac title, The Double Turn (1956), that has been a longtime resident on my wishlist.

The Double Turn, also published as The Late Miss Trimmings, begins when Jocelyn Truby takes his niece, Susan Truby, and her friend Peter Raven to an exhibition of Victorian era paintings in the long gallery of Verulam House. They're admiring a huge canvas by one of the period greats, Adrian Delafield, "shown in the Academy of 1898." Susan is impressed with the grandeur and age of the painting ("gosh, that was last century"), while Jocelyn tells them the Great Victorian is still alive. As they're discussing Delafield, they are joined by a young man, Roy Braithwaite, who's Delafield's grandson and pitched in the conversation when he overheard them.

Adrian Delafield, now practically an invalid, lives at "Firenze" in St. John's Wood where he's looked after by an old maid and religious maniac, Miss Trimmings, who's "the power in the house" acting like its "ménagère and major-domo," but she takes good care of both the house and its owner – as she's absolutely devoted to Delafield. Delafield's only surviving daughter and Roy's aunt, Virgilia, lives in his old, detached studio and allowed the situation, because she didn't want to deprive her father of Miss Trimmings after depending on her for more than thirty years. Virgilia kept an eye on Miss Trimmings to make sure things don't go off the rails again like last time. Miss Trimmings had kept Delafield locked away to such an extent people thought he had died. Roy invites Jocelyn, Susan and Peter to visit Firenze to see the paintings in Delafield's former studio, meet the family and Miss Trimmings.

During their visit, there's an incident that in a Victorian-era novel of sensation would have been described as a portent of evil. A week later, the doctor comes by to see Delafield, but finds the house locked up, dead bolted from the inside and suspiciously quiet.

When they break their way into the house, they find part of the recently plastered ceiling had come down and the body of Miss Trimming lying at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway ("...her head was twisted on her neck..."). A tray with broken pieces of crockery and glass lay near the body. Adrian Delafield is discovered lying unconscious on the stairs of the second floor landing. So the local policeman in charge works on the assumption the crash of the falling ceiling caused Miss Trimmings to trip down the stairs and Delafield "heard her fall and tried to reach her." But why is the plasterer who worked on the ceiling nowhere to be found. That's one of the details drawing Inspectors Rivers and Lancing, of Scotland Yard, into the case. And, to be honest, they really had no reason to interfere in what looked like a normal, everyday domestic accident. It unquestionably made for a better detective story that they did.

The Double Turn is listed in Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991), but, as other reviewers have pointed out, Lorac was not John Dickson Carr who would turned the locked up, bolted house the hinge that made the plot move – somehow found a way (ROT13) gb znxr gur byq cnvagre gur xvyyre. A possibility I was trying to work into an armchair theory myself. Lorac focused on the enigmatic duo of Miss Trimmings and Adrian Delafield. Miss Trimmings' identity can be verified for sure as she made a surprisingly thorough job in blotting out her past. Not even a snippet, or two, left over from a destroyed paper trail. At the same time, questions are raised about Delafield's identity as most of his family is either dead or hadn't seem him for decades before they reunited. So part of the plot also turns on the age-old question of identity complicated by the fact "family histories are generally on the squalid side," which here is no exception. Even the family yarn how Miss Trimmings got Delafield out of France when the Nazis invaded is blurry. Rivers and Lancing still have to consider the problem of the missing plasterer and the possibility of miser's fortune stowed away somewhere, but they inevitably return to the problem of the locked house.

First of all, while the locked house itself is not given the same attention as the well-drawn characters, their domestic circumstances and potential motives, a possible (false) solution is briefly explored. A solution discounted as the killer would have had to cross the plaster debris without leaving footprints. The actual locked room-trick is not exactly routine, but neither is it blistering original. However, the somewhat unusual scene of the crime helped to prop it up and ended up doing the trick most satisfyingly. I preferred it to the lame armchair solution I had pieced together. More importantly, the trick revealed the murderer who was surprisingly well hidden among this small cast of characters lacking any of the obvious or least-likely-suspects making The Double Turn Lorac's most accomplished, well-clued whodunits. Particular (HUGE SPOILER/ROT13) gur pyhr uvqqra va gur tbqqnza obbx gvgyr vgfrys is the kind of clueing usually expected from Lorac's better remembered, often more highly regarded contemporaries. Only, tiny smudge that needs mentioning is how Rivers could have (SPOILERS/ROT13) ceriragrq gjb, znlor guerr qrnguf unq ur tvira gur ceboyrz bs gur ybpxrq ubhfr uvf shyy nggragvba rneyvre ba va gur fgbel. Not that it detracted too much from this otherwise excellent detective novel. Just something I couldn't help noticing and nitpick about.

So, I know I lavished praise on the previous two Lorac's reviewed on here, calling both Death of an Author (1935) and Murder as a Fine Art my favorite Lorac reprints to date, but The Double Turn is now my favorite Lorac reprint to date! Not exactly what I expected after all these years, but well worth the long wait. A highly recommended highlight from the twilight years of the detective story's Golden Age. Fingers crossed Lorac's frustratingly rare, out-of-print Murder in St. John's Wood (1934) is next to be reprinted.

Note for the curious: if you're curious about my lame armchair theory, I figured (ROT13) fvapr gur byq cnvagre'f zvaq jnf tbvat “tntn” ng gvzrf, ur pbhyq tvira gur byq, unys oyvaq znvq n fpner ol chyyvat n cenax ba ure jvgubhg arrqvat gb yrnir uvf orq. Fbzrguvat ur pbhyq oneryl qb naljnl. Sbe rknzcyr, jung vs ur sbhaq n ovt fcvqre penjyvat ba uvf orq furrg, pnhtug vg naq uvq vafvqr n ancxva ba gur genl. Jura fur jrag qbjafgnvef jvgu gur genl, gur fcvqre penjyrq ba ure unaq tvivat ure sevtug naq penfuvat qbja gur fgnvef. Gur byq cnvagre urneq jung unccrarq, gevrq gb trg gb ure naq sryy qbja n syvtug bs fgnvef uvzfrys. Fbzrguvat nybat gubfr yvarf, orpnhfr V nffhzrq gur ybpxrq ubhfr jnf n erq ureevat naq gur erny vzcbffvovyvgl vf ubj n arne vainyvq onfvpnyyl pbasvarq gb uvf orqebbz pbhyq pnhfrq ure gb snyy qbja gur fgnvef. Ohg vg jbhyq unir plpyrq gur fgbel onpx gb vgf fgnegvat cbvag, v.r. n ubzr nppvqrag jvgubhg n ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel. Fb tbbq guvat zl fbyhgvba pbhyqa'g unir orra zber jebat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Darker the Night (1949) by Herbert Brean

There are a handful of dusty, timeworn tropes and cliches that make detective fans despair when they rear their ugly head in a mystery, novel or short story, published after 1920 – tropes and cliches that belong to that pre-Golden Age period. Namely, secret passageways, untraceable poisons, exotic animals and surprise twins. But nothing can make most of us cringe as hard as a detective story involving hypnosis and mesmerism. A trope and crutch of bad, third-rate pulp fiction rarely making for good detective fiction.

So this antipathy against mixing hypnotism and mesmerism with mystery and detection is probably why Herbert Brean's second Reynold Frame novel, The Darker the Night (1949), is rarely mentioned. And, until recently, almost never discussed or reviewed. Sure, it doesn't help it's sandwiched in between stuck Brean's most famous (Wilders Walk Away, 1948) and best (Hardly a Man is Now Alive, 1950) detective novels, but the edition currently easiest to find (Pocket Book) has the off-putting phrase "was a hypnotist controlling THE KILLER?" screaming across its cover. Not something to inspire confidence or curiosity in fans of vintage mysteries. Most of can cite examples from first-rate writers, like Clyde B. Clason or Carter Dickson, who tried to do something halfway decent with it and failing miserably. The Darker the Night is not that kind of mystery and needed to tidy up this series one day. So why not now?

Reynold Frame, a freelance photographer, writer and amateur detective, returned to New York from his adventures in Wilders Lane, Vermont, to await the arrival of his fiancee, Constance Wilders – who try to get married in the next novel. While perusing the newspaper, Frame spots the name of an old college flame, Lee Ballantyne. A one-paragraph story reporting the death of Douglas Ballantyne, a Cleveland attorney and ex-judge, who "jumped or fell to his death today from the 26th floor of the Barchester Hotel." Frame contacts Lee to see if there's anything he can do for her, but, shortly after their reunion, begins to suspect her uncle's death was due to a push rather than a dizzy spell on a dangerous balcony. Frame begins to investigate, what could be, murder involving friends and friends of friends.

There's the wealthy, likable widow, Margaret O'Hara, who's engaged to an ex-British army major, Varian Trevor. Eddie Nolan, hero of the World Series, Glance Keenly, a night club singer, socialite "Bix" Ramsay, soap opera writer Annie St. Ann, night club hypnotist Gary Price and his willing subject, Adele Swatcher. A small, close-knit group that makes up its own slice of night club scene and Frame's investigation takes place against "indefatigable buzz and murmur an clink of a New York cocktail party." This close-knit group is fascinated with hypnotism and being hypnotized by their friend Gary Price naturally raising some questions about Ballantyne's death. Even more so, when another person from this close-knit group falls out of a window.

Like I said, hypnosis in a detective story is a crimson red flag, but Brean raised the subject practically at the outset as a double reassurance. Hypnosis was not going to be used as a lazy, cop-out explanation and likely not much to do with how the murders were done, but more on that in a minute.

Beside the hypnotism angle, there's more to the deaths needing investigation like why Douglas Ballantyne asked Margaret O'Hara to postpone her engagement? Why has one of them gone missing? Why is Benny the Bump, an ex-mobster, trying to silence Frame? Benny the Bump turned out to be surprisingly fun character providing the book with one, of two, memorable sequences when Frame finds him. The other one comes when "playing detective" comes with consequences and Frame has to find a way to escape from Detective James Kilroy and Assistant D.A. Philip la Vella. If anything, The Darker the Night is another testament to Brean's talent as a storyteller ensuring you keep turning the pages. Only things occasionally slowing down the pace are the wonderful, often lengthy footnotes on subjects such as the rarity of defenestration, historical New York murders and ESP – even a recipe for spiedino romana. The footnotes are meant to be a nod to S.S. van Dine, but Brean made the odd, curious footnotes a quirk of his own.

That brings me to the plot of The Darker the Night. So, of course, neither the two victims or the murderer acted under the haze of an hypnotic spell. Brean may have been a better writer and storyteller than plotter, but neither was he third-rate who would seriously offer hypnosis as an explanation for how the murders were pulled off. However, while hypnosis was not the cause of the deaths, neither has it a good alternative explanation. Someone was pushed from a balcony and another one was hurled out of a window. So it comes down to whodunit and why, not how. It has been remarked "you could really tag anyone as the culprit with similar result," but have to disagree as that would ignore inventive motive tying and holding everything together.

The Darker the Night is very similar in that regard as the last of the Frame novels, The Clock Strikes Thirteen (1954). Neither fail to entertain or fascinate, but their thin-ish plots needed the characters, backdrop and situation to carry them to a full-fledged book. So a good, fun book, but definitely one falling into the category "for fans and completists only." If you're new to Brean's shamefully neglected detective fiction, I recommend giving Wilders Walks Away, Hardly a Man is Now Alive or the often overlooked The Traces of Brillhart (1960) a shot.

By the way, I'm near completing Brean myself. There's only the standalone novel Collar for the Killer (1957) and a dozen uncollected (hint, hint, C&L) short stories left to go.

Cross Marks the Spot (1933) by James Ronald

Last year, the Moonstone Press completed their ambitious, massive reprinting project of James Ronald's nearly forgotten, long out-of-print pulp and detective fiction spread out over a dozen volumes – which started with Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023). A volume collecting Ronald's earliest endeavors as a writer and included the once obscure, sought after novel Six Were to Die (1932), but Murder in the Family (1936) and They Can't Hang Me (1938) from vol. 2 and 4 proved to be the true highlights from this run of reprints. A run that closed out with the publication of Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 12: She Got What She Asked For (2025).

The last time I visited Ronald's pulpy brand of detective fiction was more than a year ago when reviewing The Secret of Hunter's Keep (1931) and The Sealed Room Murder (1934) from Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 11: The Sealed Room Murder (2024). So high time I returned to Ronald and decided to go with Cross Marks the Spot (1933) collected in Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 6: Cross Marks the Spot (2024).

Cross Marks the Spot is the first, of two, novel-length novels featuring Ronald's best realized, regrettably short-lived series detective, Julian Mendoza, who's an ex-adventurer turned ace reporter for the Morning World – becoming known the Bloodhound of Fleet Street. Mendoza also appeared in five (short) novels that appeared in The Thriller Library series and a rewrite of Cross Marks the Spot under the title The Frightened Girl (as by "Michael Crombie"). The first chapter here gives an excellent introduction of Mendoza while neatly setting up the plot.

Mendoza has lived the life of a "reckless adventurer" since he was a youth, until a near fatal encounter with a lion left one of his legs "a pitiful scarred and shrunken limb," which forced him to return to London. Restless as ever, Mendoza decided to be come crime reporter ("criminals are merely men with the instincts of animals") and hunt down murderers for the Morning World despite his handicap ("in a civilized city half a man is as good as a whole one"). When the story opens, Mendoza has become restless again and goes out in streets looking for a good story. And what he gets hold of turns out to be next morning's headline. Mendoza spots a young, beautiful, but obvious frightened, woman fleeing the Dorian Building. A building of luxurious apartments where the famous movie magnate, Jacob Singerman, who had an appointment with the frightened woman that went disastrous.

Shortly after this scene, Hyman Singerman arrives at Dorian House to discover his brother's body with a bullet hole in his head. Mendoza worms himself into the case by impersonating a Scotland Yard detective and goes over the scene, before the official police has even arrived. Mendoza discovers the frightened woman is an aspiring movie actress, Cicely Foster, but, when he tracks her down, she says she had only hit him when became physical ("...there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me if I would be nice to him"). If she didn't shot Singerman, who did and how? As it must have been done within the short window of time between Cicely Foster's hasty exit and Hyman Singerman's arrival. Just in time as the police finally catches up Mendoza, but convinces Inspector Howells to work on the case alongside him. That brings him to Jacob and Hyman Singermans' Colossal Film Company.

Now it has been commented upon in the past how classic British mysteries taking place at film studios rarely tend to be good detective stories, even from normally top-tier mystery authors like Edmund Crispin (Frequent Hearses, 1940) or Carter Dickson (And So to Murder, 1950). One reason given is too much focus on the background and mise-en-scène than story and plot. That's not the case as Ronald opted for a series of short, sharp scenes that show the plain, ugly woodwork behind the scenes of the movie studio business covering everything from struggling, poverty stricken actors to the higher ups at the studio and the power they wield over everyone below them – providing another plot-thread that could have been its own novel. Colossal Film Company is currently paying through their nose to produce a film directed by the mad scientist of the movie industry, Gustav von Blom, who can spend thousands of pounds to make a foot of film. Von Blom is also a typical, temperamental and abusive artist who's notoriously difficult to work with.

The movie Von Blom is shooting involves an internal triangle, but found the emotions and passion of the cast lacking in realism. So fired the whole cast and started from scratch by engaging two actors and an actress, Russell Clayton, Philip Dressler and Norma Lavery, who are involved in a real-life love triangle. Von Blom contracted them separately and only told them a day before rehearsals. They, of course, refuse to take part in, what's essentially, an emotional snuff movie, but they already signed the contracts ("...murder will be done before it's finished"). Add to this Von Blom rooms at Dorian House and has a motive, an attempted murder of a studio employee and Mendoza demonstrating what a one-legged man can do in an ass kicking when he knows his jiu jitsu, Cross Marks the Spot never bores for a second. More importantly, the plot holds up a lot better than the second Mendoza novel, Death Croons the Blues (1934), which fell apart with its ridiculous solution. Fortunately, the solution here held together even when parts of Ronald's pulp roots came to the surface. Not a bad conclusion either. Perhaps not quite as good, overall, as Murder in the Family and They Can't Hang Me, but a good, solid and well-deserved third place. Recommended as a good, fun and fast-paced mystery novel with pulp tendencies and great introduction to James Ronald and one of his best, too short lived detectives.

The Snake of Luvercy (1926/27) by Maurice Renard

John Pugmire passed away in 2024 and his death not only meant the end of Locked Room International, but also ended the steady stream of translations of Paul Halter and other, often obscure, French mystery writers – none of whom would have gotten translated without him. Just the translation of Michel Herbert and Eugène Wyl's La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932) alone is as big a contribution to the genre as introducing Halter to a global audience. So, when it comes to translations of French (locked room) mystery novels, not much has been published for the past two years.

Tom Mead translated Pierre Véry's Les veillées de la Tour Pointue (The Secret of the Pointed Tower, 1937) for Crippen & Landru and currently is doing some fresh translations of previously published Paul Halter novels. So was considering to finally give Émile Gaboriau a shot or revisit Gaston Leroux's Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) when I got fantastic news. Pushkin Vertigo is going to publish a long wished for and overdue translation of Pierre Boileau's Six crimes sans assassin (Six Crimes Without a Murderer, 1939) in November! I guess the people at Pushkin Vertigo have read "The Hit List: Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated." Maybe a translation of Rafeal Bernal's Un muerto en la tumba (A Dead Man in the Tomb, 1946) next year?

Earlier this year, Serling Lake reprinted Maurice Renard's ? Lui ? Histoire d'un mystère (Him? The Story of a Mystery, 1926/27), which appeared in English under the title The Snake of Luvercy – translated by Florence Crewe-Jones and published by E.P. Dutton & Co in 1930. Renard is best remembered today as one of the pioneering French science-fiction writers, even creating his own subgenre dubbed "Scientific Marvel Fiction," but Renard also tried his hands at detective fiction. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, is a fan who called The Snake of Luvercy "an excellent, fast paced thriller" containing "a murder in a locked bathroom with a bizarre solution involving a baroque murder means." John also praised Renard's Les mains d'Orlac (The Hands of Orlac, 1920) for being "a brilliantly fashioned detective novel wherein a series of impossible crimes are made to appear to be the work of supernatural agencies and a spectral being." So picked up the recent reprint of The Snake of Luvercy and hunting for a copy of The Hands of Orlac, because that's what John Pugmire would have wanted.

In 1926, The Snake of Luvercy was serialized in L'Intransigeant and published as a novel the following year. So a typical French roman-feuilleton full with sensational twists, turns and spins. You can say the story as a flexible as the titular snake driven entirely by a small, tightly-knit cast of characters.

Firstly, there are Miss Gilberta Laval and her dashing fiancé, Jean Mareuil, who's a rich dilettante who collects antique keys and old lamps. This match made in heaven spells trouble for Gilberta's aunt and cousin, Mme. de Prasse and her only son, Lionel. Mme. de Prasse plan had been for Lionel to marry Gilberta, secure the family fortune and cover up a slight financial irregularity ("...well, your gambling debts, Lionel, you know..."). Mme. de Prasse is Gilberta's legal guardian, but refreshingly, she doesn't hold the same power over her ward like her American and British counterparts ("armed with the Code, she could get rid of me and demand an accounting of her affairs..."). So they have to keep up appearances while plotting and carefully making their moves, which means acting as detectives, shadowing and poking around Jean Mareuil's private affairs hoping to find scandal and skeleton – anything to break them up. They enlist the help of the Lavals ex-butler, Aubry, who has a score to settle with Gilberta for sacking him.

While on shadowing duty, Aubry and Lionel discover a secret that could be a potential engagement breaker. Jean Mareuil moonlights as a snake charmer, Charlot the Adder, who's is an entertainment act in the dark cabarets of the Parisian underworld. But are they dealing with a double identity or dual personality? There's also a locked room murder lurking in the background of the story.

Five years ago, Guy Laval, an explorer, brought back "a number of rare serpents" from Central Africa to their home, Luvercy, but one of the deadly snakes escaped and found its way into Jeanne Laval's "almost hermetically closed" bedroom. The open windows were shuttered, however, each shutter is "pierced with a little heart-shaped opening cut in the wood for ventilation" big enough for a viper to slither through. Jeanne Laval was bitten while asleep and died. The guilt of having caused this accident killed her husband and left their daughter an orphan in the hands of her aunt, but could it have been murder? But who did it and how? The snake that killed Jeanne was never found leaving a Gilberta traumatized determined to never return to Luvercy. Getting her to return to Luvercy to confront the past becomes an ever increasing important plot point towards the end.

The Snake of Luvercy is what can be expected from a pulp-style, roman-feuilleton in the spirit of Gaston Leroux, Maurice Leblanc and a dash of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So hardly an orthodox, traditionally-plotted and clued detective novel, but credit where credit's due, the story is better written and handled than expected going by the first-half. The murderer is surprisingly well-hidden with enough nudges and hints to make a fairly educated guess, while the locked room-trick is not as open to educated guesswork. However, the method to create the locked room perfectly fitted the story's pulpy, sensationalist aesthetics and put to excellent use to help reveal, and dispose, of that murderer. I suspect that scene was also meant as a sly wink to a very famous short detective story involving a murderous snake. So, while not exactly what I'm looking for when hunting for impossible crime classics, neither left it me disappointed. On the contrary, I admired how Renard handled and controlled a story involving dual identities, an impossible snake bite and snake charmers without resorting to second-and third-rate cliches and tropes like a long-lost twin, secret passages or strange poisons. You know, unlike some writers at the time.

So, in closing, Renard simply wrote a tremendously entertaining, fast-paced flight of fancy done in the unmistakable, reality-be-damned Gallic style from Leroux's era. If you enjoyed the quality, pulp-style (locked room) mysteries by James Ronald, Noël Vindry and Alexis Gensoul and Charles Grenier, The Snake of Luvercy should be right up your alley. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward with curiosity what Serling Lake is going reprint next.