3/15/24

Murder in the Family (1936) by James Ronald

Last month, I reviewed James Ronald's Six Were to Die (1932) and a handful of his shorter works collected in Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023), which is the first in a reportedly 14 volume reprint project by Moonstone Press – aiming to reprint all of Ronald's crime fiction over the next few years. The first volume is a sampling of Ronald's earliest, tentative steps as a writer of crime stories and pulp mysteries. So quality tended to vary between stories, but what difference a few years makes!

Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 2: Murder in the Family (2023) collects a novel, a novelette and a short story. I'm going to save the two shorter works for another time and concentrate on the titular novel.

Murder in the Family (1936), alternatively published as The Murder in Gay Ladies and Trial Without Jury, is a novel of crime rather than detection, but there's nothing pulpy about this deeply human, sometimes downright uneasy crime novel. This book is not what I expected from the man who wrote the Dr. Britling series and have never agreed with Jim so much when he wrote this about Murder in the Family, "something that's so far from the sort of thing I'd expect to like that I honestly don't know what to make of it." Not only because it's a character-driven crime novel, but, in a way, it can be read as a criticism of treating murder as a parlor game. Not my poison, yet I loved it.

Stephen Osborne, a man in his fifties, worked for the firm of Samuel Padbury & Son for more than two decades, "twenty-four years of clerical drudgery," but a small sacrifice in order to support a large, loving and everyday family – a family he started with Edith in the small, charming village of Gay Ladies. They have a handful of children, Dorothy, Ann, Michael, Marjory and Peter, who range from twelve years to twenty-three. This loving household is rounded out by the house help, Hannah Gale, who's dog loyal to the family and sporadic stays from the children's Uncle Simon Osborne. A "graceless reprobate" whose only legitimate source of income was occasionally churning out "a thriller for the publishers of twopenny bloods," but there was always a bed waiting for him at Gay Ladies when he needed to get away from his creditors. So with five children to feed, cloth, educate and helping out Uncle Simon every now and then, they had never been able to save money. And when, one day, Stephen is let go from his job with no prospect of finding a position elsewhere. Just like that, Stephen's dreams of a better life for his children are shattered.

There is, however, one option still open to Stephen, but not one he relishes. Stephen has a rich half-sister, Miss Octavia Osborne, who cut him off without a penny when he married Edith against her wishes ("that's why he's been slaving his heart out on an office stool..."). Uncle Simon explains to his niece Ann that with her Aunt Octavia "quarrels may slumber, but they never die," predicting she'll turn down her father ("her veins flow with vinegar"). The family is not exactly looking forward to a week-long visit from "acid-tongued, sniffy-nosed old megalomaniac" as she's only happy when she can fault in the children, criticize how the house is run and generally having a beastly temper. When she arrives in Gay Ladies, Octavia makes short work of establishing herself as top 10 material for most murderable victim in a detective story.

Just as predicted, Octavia not only considers it her duty to withhold her assistance, but, gleefully, announces she has taken steps of drafting a new will – which cuts out her brother and his children completely. So tempers begin to flare and think a lot of readers will get some satisfaction from this unvarnished confrontation, but Octavia simply brushes it off and informs them she'll be leaving immediately. But while waiting in the sitting room, someone sneaks up behind her and tries to strangle her, causing a fatal heart attack. Ann was in the room reading Shakespeare, but says she didn't hear or see anyone enter the room.

Conventional enough for something written in 1936 and the following police investigation does not immediately dispel the illusion of a typical, Golden Age village mystery, but the police soon retreat into the background of the story. Simply for the reason that they can make a good case against every member of the family, even its youngest members ("a child could have done it"), but they can't put them all on trial. So the focus of the story shifts to showing the often brutal fall out the family has to endure of being implicated in the murder of a close relative in their own home. Firstly, there's the press descending on Gay Ladies and having to read about themselves in the papers complete with descriptions of each family members and "veiled hints that no outsider could have been responsible" ("...cunningly enough to avoid an action for libel"). Secondly, the heart breaking way in which the family is cast aside by their own community or at best treated as a morbid curiosity. There's a gaping crowd at their garden gate, their letterbox is over flowing with hate mail and their ghoulish neighbor, Miss Whipple, talked her way into the house to sit in the murder chair – delighted that she now had a story to tell. The eldest daughter, Dorothy, was about to be engaged, but the parents of the boy immediately packed him off to France when the news broke. And the two youngest find that they have no friends left at school.

The blows to this sympathetic family keep coming, one after another, which only appear to stop to take a breather, but never veering into over the top dramatics. On the contrary. Murder in the Family is uncomfortably homely with on the one hand a once loving and caring household put through hell, while the outside world sees their situation as nothing more than a good story that sells newspapers or give people something to speculate over at the pub. This stark difference becomes painfully clear at the end when you see just how much they're willing to sacrifice in order to protect each other. After all, someone knotted that scarf around Octavia's neck. But who?

I feared Ronald had written himself in a corner here, because how can you possibly deliver a murderer who's not coming across a letdown or cop-out? Do you actually pick someone from the household, because whether they're allowed to get away with it, or not, it would be dark, unrewarding end either way. The preceding events made that abundantly clear. But picking an outsider would be a cheap cop-out to go for a happy ending. So became increasingly more skeptical towards the end as there appeared to be no way for the story to deliver a worthy ending that was not going to feel like a letdown, one way or another. My first response to the murderer finally being pulled out in the open was thinly veiled disappointment. Only to be then told the motive for the murder! What it implied as to what happened after the murder. Someway, somehow, Ronald's pulled it off in the end and created, what's essentially, an anti-detective story which even a proponent of murder-as-a-parlor-game can enjoy. You can call me a radical, if you want, but I believe the only place for murder in a civilized world is in fiction. So I'm not going to apologize for being a ghoul who enjoys a good game of whodunit crammed with locked rooms and dying messages, but appreciated the point that was being made. More importantly, how it was made. If I'm ever redoing my list of 101 all-time favorite crime-and detective novels, Murder in the Family has secured a spot on it! So never let it be said I only care about the nuts-and-bolts type of detective story. Anyway, highly recommended!

A note for the curious: you know what I haven't done in a while? Share one of my half-baked, incorrect armchair solutions I concocted and entertained while reading. On the day of the murder, Peter gets into a fight with the village bully, Ernie Piper, but get pulled apart by Marjory. She returns in kind everything Ernie throws at them ("Ernie hated games that two could play") and beats a hasty retreat, while vowing revenge. Octavia died of shock from suddenly having a scarf pulled across her throat without any force. Not strangulation. Which is why the police couldn't discount the two youngest as the deed required no strength whatsoever. So began to wonder if Ernie could have been sulking around the house, looking for an opportunity to settle his score, noticed Dorothy's scarf and Octavia in the sitting room with his back towards him. Why not scare the hell out of the old bat and place the blame with the Osborne children? Ernie is the post office messenger boy and could approach the house without arousing curiosity. For example, from the all-seeing of Miss Whipple's telescope. Of course, the intention was to frighten, not to kill, but Ernie is a cowardly bully who would initially keep his mouth shut, but, over a long enough time, would probably give himself away. It would not have been best solution, but it would have made for an interesting enough ending. After all they went through together, the police stroll back into their home to casually announce the whole matter has been resolved complete with a confession. A terrible tragedy and all that. No hard feelings or harm done and take their leave. A solution that likely would have deflated the entire story, but a possibility I seriously considered. Fortunately, Ronald came up with a much better conclusion.

3/12/24

Locked and Loaded, Part 4: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mystery Stories

I always try to somewhat vary the type of detective novels and short stories discussed on this blog. For example, I recently reviewed James Ronald's pulp-style impossible crime novel Six Were to Die (1932) followed by a character-driven whodunit by Nicholas Blake (The Dreadful Hollow, 1953), two Japanese manga mysteries (Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 35-36) and J.S. Savage's retro-GAD The Mystery of Treefall Manor (2023) – which I think is varied crosscut of our corner of the genre. There's, of course, a difference between trying and succeeding. A firmly established tradition on this blog is that the locked room mystery is omnipresent and impossible to escape. Whether discussing Golden Age mysteries, their modern-day descendants or the detective stories currently getting ferried across multiple language barriers. The locked room is always present.

So, despite my attempts to keep everything somewhat varied, the blog regularly goes through periods where every other review is tagged with the "locked room mysteries" toe-tag. I'm simply obsessed fascinated with the damn things. This blog is currently going through one of those periods, but this time, I've an excuse a pretty good reason to fanboy all over them make a rigorous study of them.

Last year, I put together "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century: A Brief Historic Overview of the First Twenty (Some) Years." I very soon realized I should have waited until 2025 as two more years would have given a much clearer picture of the current developments. So the plan is to eventually do a follow-up focusing solely on the ten-year period 2015-25, which is why I have been building a small pile of contemporary, retro-GAD mysteries. Not all of them are of the impossible variety, but most are and intend on decimating that pile in the two, three months ahead – interspersed with some golden oldies. So that's what you can expect in the coming weeks and months, but first need to get some odds and ends out of the way.

I previously compiled three posts under the title "Locked and Loaded," part 1, 2 and 3, which reviews uncollected short stories. This time, I had a handful of uncollected stories from the past 60 years (1963-2023) that I needed to get out of the way.

Lawrence G. Blochman's "Murder Behind Schedule," originally published in Clues for Dr. Coffee (1963) and reprinted as "Young Wife" in the November 17, 1963, publication of This Week. A very short, but legitimate, impossible crime story somehow not mentioned in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) nor Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). This is the perfect filler material for locked room-themed anthology as it's short, simple and not devoid of interest. Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee, chief pathologist at Pasteur Hospital, is trying to work on New Methods of Post-mortem Diagnosis of Drowning when Lieutenant Max Ritter whisks him away to the scene of a very curious crime ("...like a case for that Dr. Gideon Fell you made me read about last summer"). Michael Waverly is a patron of the arts and a hard businessman, "people either worshiped him or hated his guts," who collected enemies left and right. Even at home. Waverly's marriage is on the rocks as his wife is having an affair with the second violinist of the Waverly String Quartet and someone tried to kill him only a week ago. Ritter received a frantic call from Waverly, "he's after me again," followed by a groan, loud banging noises and then utter silence. So what, exactly, happened and how did the murderer manage to escape from a locked room?

Like I said this is a very short, good and cleverly constructed detective story with an interesting and even realistic take on the classic trope of a murder inside a locked room. A locked room situation that would not be out of place in an episode of CSI. Despite being, what can called a realistic impossibility, Mike Grost points out on his website that the story "contains a gracious homage to John Dickson Carr" and "Carr in turn was a fan of Blochman" praising "his stories in print" – which got Clues for Dr. Coffee moved nearer the top of the pile. This short story and praise from Carr is enough to warrant further investigation.

Edward D. Hoch's wrote "The Locked Room Cipher" for a game-themed anthology, Who Done It? (1980), which hid the identity of the authors behind a code. So the story is not particularly well-known either as a work from Hoch's hand or as a locked room mystery.

"The Locked Room Cipher" stars the one-shot detective and newspaper columnist, Ross Calendar, who's invited by Terry Box to attend a high profile reunion. Terry Box had once worked in Washington, "doing something with codes and computers," but nowadays owns and runs "the hottest new disco restaurant since Studio 54," Sequin City – a place with some peculiar features. Beside giving its patrons the feeling they're in Hollywood or Las Vegas, every room and corner is under the watchful eye of closed-circuit TV cameras. The mirrored panels are actually one-way glass allowing viewers from above to watch the action below without being seen ("...something more suitable to a bank or gambling casino than a New York disco"). Now there's a reunion with three of Box's former colleagues from Washington who all worked with computers, ciphers or both. During the reunion, Box and Calendar witnesses one of them getting shot and killed on live CCTV inside the private dinning room with the door securely bolted from the inside. When they break down the door, the murderer has vanished and the only clue is a computer print-out of a cipher found in the victim's pocket.

Just as to be expected from Hoch, "The Locked Room Cipher" is a competently put together detective story, but the most difficult one to crack. The murderer is easily spotted and the method to create the illusion of an unseen shooter vanishing from a bolted room under camera surveillance is easy to anticipate. However, the passage of time turned it into a historically noteworthy "modern" impossible crime story. Sure, the technology used in the story is hopelessly outdated today, crude and clunky, but that crudeness gives it a charm of its own. More importantly, it's technological crudeness is what allowed Hoch to put a new spin on an old trick. In 1980, "The Locked Room Cipher" must have impressed as a promising example of what can be done with the classical locked room in a high-tech environment.

I wonder if detective fans of the future will look back on a story like "The Unlocked Locked Room Murder" (Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 79) as crude and clunky, but quaint and pleasantly old-fashioned? After all, by that time they should be experiencing (which replaced reading) detective stories in which murderers create unbreakable alibis with AI-operated, holographic doubles or creating locked rooms with nanomaterials that can form a sealed door. Anyway...

M.P.O. Books' "De schilder die de waarheid liefhad" ("The Painter Who Loved the Truth," 2019), published as by "Anne van Doorn," shamelessly lingered on the big pile for years. And pretty much one of the main reasons for doing this compilation post. If you're not familiar with previous reviews, Books is the only Dutch crime-and mystery writer, past or present, who has written (good) impossible crime fiction in a significant quantity. From the early De blikvanger (The Eye-Catcher, 2010) and the excellent Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013) to De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019) and Het Delfts blauw mysterie (The Delft Blue Mystery, 2023) under the Van Doorn name. And more than half a dozen short stories.

"The Painter Who Loved the Truth" could have just as easily been titled "The People Who Played Dominoes," because the story is plotted around the domino-effect as "crime sometimes takes the form of a game of dominoes, which are placed half a stone apart and upright" ("if the first one falls, they all fall"). That proved to be the case when an outgoing minister, Herman van Grootheest, is shockingly shot to death in his vacation home on Texel, "the first assassination of a prominent politician since Pim Fortuyn," but the police soon have a prime suspect, Joost Leijendekker – a house painter who was in possession of the murder weapon. And that's not the only damning evidence the police uncovers. During a reconstruction on the island, Leijendekker manages to escape and his flight ends on the doorstep of the two private investigators of Research & Discover, Robbie Corbijn and Lowina de Jong.

Leijendekker pleads he's innocent and Corbijn wants to help "the most wanted man in the Netherlands," but the painter is not exactly making it easy by insisting the gun was in his possession at the time of the murder. Not only in his possession, but safely under lock and key! Nobody except him knows the code to the safe. The trick to explain this impossibility is a neat one. However, this story is even better in its cause-and-effect structure as Corbijn and De Jong have to pick apart a series seemingly unconnected incidents that proved to be domino stones toppling one after another, which created the circumstances allowing for the murder to happen. It's a pleasing effect.

Tom Mead is a prominent member of today's locked room revivalists who signed his name to three novels, Death and the Conjuror (2022), The Murder Wheel (2023) and the upcoming Cabaret Macabre (2024), and a growing list of short stories – which I wish were easily available. Preferably in one place like a proper short story collection. One easily accessible short story from Mead you can read right now is "Jack Magg's Jaw" (2022).

"Jack Magg's Jaw" was published on The Strand Magazine website on September 30, 2022, as part of a competition to win a Locked Room Prize pack comprising of a hardcover copy of Mead's Death and the Conjuror, Otto Penzler's Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries (2022) and tickets for an escape room. All you had to do is solve the problem of the titular jaw and a small matter of a seemingly impossible murder. Joseph Spector, a retired magician and amateur detective, travels to the dark, rambling country house of Cliver Stoker to attend a slightly macabre weekend party. Stoker has his own private black museum ("behold... my museum of murder") and his most prized possession is the jawbone of a notoriously brutal highwayman, Jack Magg, who was executed in 1740. Every guest at the house party wants it. Stoker tells them they'll get to bid on it the following day, but, until then, it's locked away behind a steel door protected with a time lock that's "utterly impenetrable." When the morning comes and time lock runs out, the door opens to reveal a body inside what should have been a completely inaccessible vault. A very short, but good and fun little impossible crime story in which Mead's love for Clayton Rawson and Jonathan Creek bleeds through.

After last year's Monkey See, Monkey Murder (2023), James Scott Byrnside is currently working on a collection of short stories featuring his two Chicago gumshoes from the Roaring Twenties, Rowan Manory and Walter Williams. On the last day of 2023, Byrnside posted the first short story from that future collection, "The Silent Steps of Murder," on his blog as a New Year's present. Thanks! Very much appreciated and enjoyed!

"The Silent Steps of Murder" begins with Rowan Manory and Walter Williams out and about on New Year's Eve, "Chicago was ready to bid farewell to 1927," when they hear someone yelling murder. A young beat cop, Quinn, who immediately recognizes Chicago's famous detective and tells Manory he heard a loud crash, or noise, coming from one of the apartment buildings on his beat. When he goes to investigate, Quinn finds the body of the woman who lives there with a gunshot wound to the chest and stab wounds to the face. The state of the room suggests a robbery gone wrong or, perhaps, arranged to appear like a botched burglary that ended with a brutal murder. Just one problem. The murderer has to be still in the building, because the only footprints in the snow outside belong to Quinn. Manory assures Williams that Quinn is not the murderer, but, if not Quinn, who else could have left the place without leaving footprints?

There's a challenge to the reader, "Rowan has already solved the case. Have you? Here are some questions you should be able to answer," but it took me until after that point until things began clicking into place. Even then, I considered another variation that was actually mentioned in the comments. However, the solution deserves a blue ribbon. A bold move turning the story from an impossible crime story into a grand-style whodunit. This is exactly what I hoped envisioned would emerge from the Golden Age renaissance of the past decade. Go read it now and I look forward to complete collection which appears to have an overarching storyline.

So this rambling has gone on long enough. Next up is a (non-impossible) gem (I hope) from the 1930s.

3/8/24

The Mystery of Treefall Manor (2023) by J.S. Savage

Recently, I reviewed two novels from the current crop of locked room revivalists, Gigi Pandian's Under Lock & Skeleton Key (2022) and J.L. Blackhurst's Three Card Murder (2023), which both made me realize I should have waited with "The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century" until 2025 – things began to take a more definite shape right after it was posted. Under Lock & Skeleton Key and Three Card Murder also continued the tradition of having a very mixed reactions to this new generation of locked room magicians. I either love them on first sight or leave me hoping the series improves in future installments, which in case of the latter tends to produce not the most enthusiastic reviews. And those are not among the popular reviews on this blog.

So let me put those at ease who saw the title of this blog-post and feared another one of my lukewarm "hot takes," because today's subject is the genuine article!

J.S. Savage is a London-based mystery writer "who specializes in impossible crimes" and launched historical Inspector Graves series last year with The Mystery of Treefall Manor (2023). For someone who has been prophesying a second Golden Age for years now, I feel not entirely up-to-date of what's currently being produced towards that end. Savage and The Mystery of Treefall Manor are among the many authors and novels slipping pass me unnoticed. Fortunately, the GP of the mystery sphere, Steve the Puzzle Doctor, remedied that oversight with an enticing review ("this is an outstanding book") and making it a contender for his "Grand Puzzly" award in "Review of the Year – 2023." I also added Dolores Gordon-Smith's The Chapel in the Woods (2021) and Victoria Dowd's Murder Most Cold (2023) on the strength of Doc's reviews. After all, D.L. Marshall's Anthrax Island (2021) was a real winner! So lets dissect this newest arrival to the locked room revival.

The Mystery of Treefall Manor takes place in October, 1926, at the titular manor of the widowed Alexander Grimbourne in Swinbridge, Rockinghamshire, which is soon to hosting the wedding party of daughter, Ruth – who's going to be married to their young neighbor, Lord Frederick "Freddie" Taylor. A joyous occasion, to be sure, but not all is well at Treefall Manor. Alexander Grimbourne is the typical, storybook patriarch who's "quite the historian when it comes to the family roots" and their achievements ("my ancestors supplied the wood that was used to build the ships that saw off the Spanish Armada"). However, "the Grimbourne heritage is not made of wood as some people think," but "the Grimbourne men themselves, the men who cut the deals, undercut the competition, it is the name Grimbourne itself." So it was a disappointment to Grimbourne when his only son, John, was born with a withered leg and developed a love for "writing dreary, awful poetry." And their relation was never good. While he loves his daughter, Grimbourne believes she doesn't know what's best for her.

Is this why her engagement to Lord Freddie came out of nowhere or why the wedding is so hastily rushed through? Or why Grimbourne took it upon himself to invite two old friends of the bride and groom? What's on going between him and his private secretary, George Campbell? And who took the antique dagger from the library? This culminated with Grimbourne casually announcing he's going to change his will the next day with predictable results.

Alexander Grimbourne is found murdered in his study, "from his chest protruded the handle of the missing dagger," clutching a dying message plucked from the bookcase, but the door and barred windows are securely locked from the inside – confronting the local police with an impossible crime. So they immediately dispatch their top guy, Detective Inspector Graves, to the scene of the crime together with a recent addition to their ranks, Detective Constable James Carver. A young, eager and promising policeman who's still somewhat rough around the edges.

So, as you can probably gather by now, Savage hits on some of the most familiar notes and themes of the Golden Age detective story, but appearing like a Golden Age-style mystery is not always a guarantee it works like one. Often lacking good plots, fair play or simply not getting the difference between a "closed circle" and "locked room" mystery. I think we have all burned ourselves, once or twice, on such cases of false advertisements, but, as said before, Savage and The Mystery of Treefall Manor is the genuine article. A tight, cleverly-plotted and fairly clued locked room mystery that pleasantly kept me puzzling along with Graves and Carter. And, for the most part, the story felt as if it could have been published nearly a century ago. However, Savage is not merely a Han van Meegeren of detective fiction who created a nigh perfect copy of a Golden Age mystery. Savage used the same techniques as the masters from the past, but went to work fresh, new paints of his own.

Firstly, The Mystery of Treefall Manor takes place in the 1926, but is plotted like a locked room mystery from 1936. A trope of the pre-1930s detective story is that the crime scene often resembled a busy, crowded thoroughfare – littered with monogrammed handkerchiefs, cigarette buds and train tickets. Just to muddy the waters by casting suspicion on as many of the characters as possible. Graves and Carver find some litter in the locked study, but they're not red herrings. They're full-fledged clues! The detective story in 1926 was not quite there yet. Secondly, Savage avoided a pitfall some of these debuting retro-GAD novels fall into by trying to setup the whole series and fleshing out the characters in the first novel, which always comes at the expense of the plot (e.g. Pandian's Under Lock & Skeleton Key). Savage gave more depth to his two series-characters than most of their past counterparts got in their entire run, but it was done with a very light, subtle touch as Graves and Carver got to know each other a little bit over the course of their first joined-investigation. I particularly liked why Graves never acknowledges a particular question or keeping the solution to the locked room to himself to give Carver an opportunity to cut his teeth on a really tricky problem ("this looks to be a meaty sort of case to get his teeth stick in to").

I'm left with practically nothing to complain or nitpick about except for two, very minor details. Carver eventually figures out how the locked room-trick was done, which is a good and absolutely solvable, Graves asks him to name the murderer. Because "only one person could have committed the crime in that way." Aside from opportunity, the method fitted another character even better than the actual murderer and combined with the implied content of the love letter I entertained another possibility for the solution. Funnily enough, as the ending showed, even that wrong solution was not all that far off the mark. And that ending also showed a modern hand was at work. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it broke the illusion a little. If you're going to do it, you should do it right at the end.

So, nitpicking aside, Savage and The Mystery of Treefall Manor is indeed an outstanding detective novel with a plot and characters shining as bright as its Golden Age ancestors. More importantly, it's a welcome and promising addition to the rapidly growing list of locked room revivalists and retro-GAD authors. I'm eagerly looking forward to the second Graves and Carver locked room mystery, Sun, Sea and Murder (2024), which going by the title should be out around summertime.

3/5/24

Slings and Arrows: Q.E.D. vol. 35-36 by Motohiro Katou

The first of two stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 35, "Two Suspects," is a surprisingly uncomplicated, straightforward case of burglary gone wrong when the owner of a moving company, Yoshimitsu Ryozo, discovers a burglar in the manager's office – working on the safety deposit box. So the burglar takes a crowbar to the owner's skull and leaves him seriously wounded. Yoshimitsu Ryozo is either unable, or unwilling, to identify his attacker, because due to his own past "often hired those with criminal backgrounds." Only viable suspects are two of his staff members, Saburo Mikawa and Kurose Yasumasa, who have several counts of theft and assault on their record.

So a simple, but tricky, case handled by Inspector Mizuhara's subordinate, Asama Kiyori, who's very keen to impress his superior. Naturally, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara come along to drop by something for Detective Sasazuka and Kiyori is surprised when he asks Touma's opinion on the burglary ("why are you asking that stuff to a kid?"). Sasazuka explains Touma is "a genius who is respected by Inspector Mizuhare" ("so... the inspector has some like that?"). Kiyori asks Kana Mizuhara to rope in Touma to help him solve the case. After all, if the subordinate bungles an investigation, it reflects poorly on his superior, i.e. her father.

While there are only two suspects, they both have a financial motive and their alibis "only supported by someone very close to them." Just having two, or three, suspects can make things a lot more difficult and complicated than an entire swarm of suspects, which these manga detective series regularly demonstrate. Touma is not easily fooled and points out that the one difference between the suspects is "your impression of good or bad with regards to their circumstances." Logically untangles that neat, knotted little problem. A very minor, but solid, story that curiously leaves one small plot-thread unresolved.

The second story, "Christmas Present," sounds out-of-season, but the December holiday is only a small, unobtrusive decoration to a fun parody of the theatrical mystery – even poking fun at the shin honkaku-style locked room puzzles. This story centers on two of Sakisaka High School clubs. Firstly, the Drama Club whose president is a brilliant, promising young actor, Shiroi Kentarou, but despite his acting skills ("...almost at par with the professionals") is the reason why the club is bleeding members ("...he's clumsy as hell"). Always making some thoughtless mistake leading to one members, after another, giving up on the club and now they're given an ultimatum: get new members after the Christmas show or get disbanded! The notorious Detective Club comes to the rescue, but their president, Enari "Queen" Himeko has one condition. It has to be a mystery play. Not that they have script ready, but Detective Club has that covered as well, which means turing to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara for help. Touma is tasked with penning a script on the spot. Which he does.

So, of course, the collaboration between the two clubs is not exactly going smoothly and even is threatened to be canceled all together, but, for me, the highlight is the trick Touma's dreamed up for the mystery play, Murder at the Pentagon House. The play is about a murder committed in a small, pentagon-shaped house with the door and windows locked from the inside. Sure, the locked room-trick is completely tongue-in-cheek ("W-wow, such a trick exists?! No wonder it's called Pentagon House"), but nonetheless quite clever and original. More importantly, the trick can be easily used in an actual comedy mystery play. A fun, cheeky send-up of the theatrical mystery and shin honkaku impossible crime tales.

"Kurogane Villa Murder Case" is the first of two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 36 and brings Sou Touma to the Kyoto to meet with Jinnai Ryozaburou.

Jinnai Ryozaburou is a lecturer at K University whose mentor, Yanosuke Kurogane, hanged himself at his home five days previously and nobody knows why. Professor Kurogane lectured on theoretical physics for thirty years and renowned as a great researcher, but had treated a promising assistant professor badly. Namely trying to take credit. Karasuma Renji is viewed by the police as a person of interest in their ongoing investigation, but he's "impossible to handle" and tries to make himself look suspect ("this detective is an idiot"). A second murder happens when all of Professor Kurogane's friends and associates gathered at his home to mourn him. One of his potential successors is hit with an arrow while walking down an outside, roofed corridor that poses something of a problem, because long corridors like that were used for archery competitions during the Edo period – where the trick lies in distance combined with the low ceiling. A target at the end of the corridor with a low ceiling overhead limits the angles in which an arrow can be loosened. So the murder is an impossible one as "it'd require the power of a rifle" and "the aim was even a bit off..." On top of that, Karasuma Renji alluded before the murder to Zeno's Arrow Paradox.

Touma gives a clue to the solution to Kana, "the key to solve this case is why did the culprit choose an arrow as the weapon," but the arrow-trick should have been offered as a false-solution – a trick that sounds nice enough in theory. But would simply not work in practice. No matter how skilled the archer who shoots the arrow. Even if it can be done as described, there's no way it can be accurately aimed to hit a fatal spot. And, no, I don't think (ROT13) n funqbj frra sebz n guveq-sybbe ebbsgbc, cbxvat bhg sebz gur pbirerq oevqtr nqwnprag gb pbeevqbe, vf rknpg rabhtu gb uvg gur ivpgvz evtug va gur arpx. A pity as I like archery-themed detective stories of which there are only a scant few. On the other hand, the solution to the murder-disguised-as-suicide of Professor Kurogane had a much simpler, elegant solution. That murder is a quasi-impossible crime with the question being how the killer managed to enter and leave the house without being seen or leaving footprints in the snow outside the study. A mixed bag of a story.

The second and last story from this volume, "Q & A," is one of those unorthodox, character-oriented puzzles drawing on Touma's time as an MIT student in the United States.

Glass Rosfeller is an American banker who helped Touma securing research grants, when he was still studying abroad (see previous reviews), but Rosfeller intends to retire and wishes to hand over the business to one of his four children, Ian, Walter, Freya and Wood. So has an unusual favor to ask from Touma. Rosfeller wants him to select the most suitable one to succeed him and in order to do so has them gathered in a luxurious villa, on an island, in the middle of Aegean Sea. Touma brings along Kana and his younger sister, Yuu Touma. Only other people present on the island is the caretaker and his son. This all appears to be conventional enough and most readers will probably expect someone to be murdered, likely under seemingly impossible circumstances, but what happens is a series of minor and more serious incidents. There's a blackout. The gas and warm water gets turned off. The son of the caretaker is injured and finally an explosion. This short, strange series of events is retold several times from the perspective of everyone present on the island. Every time one of these incidents happened, they were all scattered around the villa or the island. A story with a really, really razor-thin plot, but Katou deserves credit for how he handled it and making it feel more substantial than it actually is. So not entirely without interest, but a minor and unmemorable entry in the series.

Obviously, vol. 36 is on a whole weaker than vol. 35 with "Christmas Present" being the standout of the two collections and the first story, "Two Suspects," standing as a solid, no-frills detective tale. "Kurogane Villa Murder Case" is not a bad story, but the arrow-trick is hard to credit and "Q & A" is one of those stories I've completely forgotten when getting to the next two volumes. Still an enjoyable read overall. You can probably expect the next Q.E.D. review by the end of the month.

3/1/24

The Dreadful Hollow (1953) by Nicholas Blake

In December, I revisited the seasonally appropriate Thou Shell of Death (1936) by "Nicholas Blake," penname of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, which turned out to be unexpected surprise as it's so much better than I remembered from my first read – a genuine Golden Age classic. I honestly had forgotten that Blake's skills as a mystery novelist were on par with Christianna Brand, John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. So started to move some of the remaining, unread Blake's nearer the top of the big pile.

Nick Fuller, of The Grandest Game in the World, graded that handful of titles in the comments and decided to go with The Dreadful Hollow (1953). A novel Nick described as "a good, well-constructed village poison pen mystery."

The Dreadful Hollow is the tenth novel to feature Blake's series detective, Nigel Strangeways, who's hired by a well-known financier to investigate a flurry of anonymous letters of the poisonous kind. Sir Archibald Blick opened machine-tool factory in Moreford, an old market town, which draws its workforce from the nearby village of Prior's Umborne, but "envy, malice and uncharitableness were at work" in the village – someone is sending "short but not sweet" letters. The vicar Mark Raynham receives one saying "get up in that pulpit, holy Joe, and tell them your wife was a whore." Daniel Durdle, son of the postmistress and religious zealot, is told "you hypocrite, I know about the strong liquors you swill privily." John Smart, foreman of the new factory, committed suicide after a letter arrived promising "I'll tell Blick about 1940." Sir Archibald wants Strangeways to go down to Prior's Umborne to discover the source of the poison pen letters.

Strangeways descending on Prior's Umborne to root out the malicious letter writer is a joy to read as the gentleman detective from London makes quite an impression on the villagers ("I saw some children imitating your walk just now. There's fame for you"). And he's a pleasantly active, energetic detective. During this first part, Strangeways meets many of the principle players of what's slowly unfolding at the village. Charles Blick is the youngest of Sir Archibald's two sons and was installed by his father as manager of the factory, which keeps him busy most of the time. Stanford Blick, eldest of the two sons, "bit of a genius in his way, but a born dabbler." Miss Celandine Chantmerle, "idolized in the village," is bound to a wheelchair and is cared for by her younger, highly strung sister, Rosebay ("the father was a botanist"). Celandine knows everything worth knowing about the village and used to be engaged to Charles, but recently, Charles and Rosebay have been seeing a lot of each other. There are the aforementioned vicar and the Durdles. And then the poison pen case takes a sinister turn.

Celandine receives a package with a pair of doctored binoculars ("...this Grand Guignol device") with a note, "read this now, Bright Eyes, if you can," which could have easily blinded her or worse – if the screw releasing the spring-trap hadn't been so stiff to move. Things don't stop there. Sir Archibald, "an apostle of eugenics," received an anonymous letter that Charles is involved with the undesirable Rosebay and comes down on Prior's Umborne to clean up the whole damn village. This ends with him being found dead at the bottom of a quarry the following day. Police quickly rule out an accident or suicide.

The Dreadful Hollow is indeed a good, well-constructed village mystery from the twilight years of the Golden Age and stands out for two reasons. The plot basically consists of three separate, but interconnected, cases sharing the same cast of characters. Blake nicely strings the poison pen letters, the deadly binoculars and the murder of Sir Archibald into an overarching, well clued and coherent narrative with a great conclusion. A conclusion coming as a direct consequence of those three cases and the actions of the people deeply involved in them on the small community of Prior's Umborne. So a very well done, slow build to a dramatic conclusion. The 1950s was a period when the genre was transitioning away from the plot-driven approach of detection and deduction to focus on character and psychology, which some tried to combine at the time and often with mixed results. Last year, I reviewed several novels by E.G. Cousins and Nigel FitzGerald who attempts were well intended and clunky at best. And, usually, it was the plot that had to give more than it received. Blake, on the other hand, beautifully harmonized the traditional, fair play approach with then emerging psychological crime novel. That alone makes The Dreadful Hollow worthy of note as it shows what perhaps could have been.

So it's therefore a shame none of the three cases poses a genuine challenge to either the reader or Strangeways, but it was nice Blake allowed Strangeways to keep pace with the reader's armchair deductions for most of the story. And one aspect of the solution is a little dubious.

Nitpicking aside, the only true flaw of The Dreadful Hollow is one that it shares with so many other so-called mid-tier titles from top-tier mystery writers. Namely being overshadowed by their authors better-known, more celebrated works. For example, Suddenly at His Residence (1946) is a superb Golden Age detective novel, but, as some have pointed out, it's not even Christianna Brand's fourth or fifth best mystery. Same can be said of The Dreadful Hollow. It's unquestionable a good village mystery, inspired in places, but Blake has penned even better, much tighter plotted detective stories. So while not the classic that's Thou Shell of Death, The Dreadful Hollow still comes recommended for what it's. Simply a very well done village mystery.

2/26/24

Six Were to Die (1932) by James Ronald

Last time, I reviewed the three novelettes and bonus short story from Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023), which is the first of twenty-some planned volumes by Moonstone Press and Chris Verner – aiming to collect all of James Ronald's detective fiction by 2025. The first installment in this series of reprints introduces the regrettably short-lived characters of Dr. Daniel Britling and his twin sister, Miss Eunice Britling, who only appeared in three novelettes and a single novel. That pulp-style locked room novel is also included in this first volume.

Ronald's Six Were to Die (1932), marking the final appearance of Dr. Daniel Britling, was originally published as a Hodder & Stoughton's Yellow Jacket Original, reprinted in 1941 by Mystery House as 6 Were to Die by "Kirk Wales" and a Cherry Tree digest edition in 1947. Verner used the version that was serialized in various newspapers around the world under the penname "Peter Gale" ("...minor punctuation and text differences between these and other versions"). Just to give you an idea that the publication history of pulp writers like James Ronald or John Russell Fearn are detective stories unto themselves.

Six Were to Die deceivingly begins with blissful scene of domesticity at the little flat in Orchard Street, which Miss Britling shared with her brother. Dr. Britling annoyed his sister by staying in bed late, delaying their breakfast and "adding insult to injury" by singing and splashing around in the bath. If I didn't know beforehand what the story is roughly about, I would have assumed from the first few pages it was going to be one of those lighthearted mysteries from the murder-can-be-fun school of Kelley Roos and the Lockridges, but the arrival of a parcel pulls it right back to the pulps. The package comes with a letter warning for the police surgeon, "this morning one Jubal Straust will call upon you and request your aid on behalf of himself and five associates," but advises Dr. Britling not "to be drawn into an affair which is none of your concern" or risk a swift, sudden and untimely death – package included a poisonous death trap as a demonstration ("...you will receive no warning with the next deadly message"). Something that has the completely opposite effect on Dr. Britling ("I don't like to be threatened. I regard it as a challenge"). Dr. Britling explains to Straust he's willing to listen to him not in spite of the anonymous threat, but because of it.

Jubal Straust is a prominent financier, "one of the crookedest members of the London Stock Exchange," who twelve years ago was one of the six partners in the Eldorado Investment Trust. There were, of course, financial shenanigans afoot that eventually caught up with them. So they scapegoated their partner and friend, Arthur Marckheim, who was sent to prison for ten years ("Besides, what is friendship? Its commercial value is nil"). After the trial concluded, they all went their separate ways, considerably richer, but now Marckheim has returned to remind them that the penalty for their double-cross is death. And knowing their former partner, they take the threat very seriously. So the five partners, Gideon Levison, Mark Annerley, Hubert Quail, Jubal Straust and has old father Israel Straust, buried themselves away in Grey Towers near Leighton Buzzard. Home of the old Straust. The sixth person on Markheim list of people to kill is his ex-wife, Cora, who's the current Mrs. Annerley.

Grey Towers is very well protected as the ten foot high fence around the estate has an integrated burglar alarm and the grounds outside are constantly patrolled by armed men, "all ex-policemen or ex-pugilists," who are armed – blowing a whistle turns on the rooftop search lights. What could go wrong? Jubal Straust is fatally poisoned while driving Dr. Britling to Grey Towers. A simple, but clever, poisoning trick demonstrating the murderer's creativity and resourcefulness. Particularly when it comes to playing on the victim's personalities, weaknesses or simply habits to help them along to an early grave. One by one, the men are poisoned under seemingly impossible circumstances or get shot in locked rooms or speeding cars.

Six Were to Die has more impossible situations than Robert Adey listed in Locked Room Murders (1991). For example, a warning from Marckheim is found inside a sealed package of playing cards or the overarching impossibility of how Marckheim can enter or move around the house without being detected. Some are better and more convincing than others, of course, but all the tricks are firmly rooted in the tradition of the pulps. I think the best of these pulp-style locked room-tricks is the poisoning of Hubert Quail, because the method to introduce the poison is ludicrous. A trick you might actually have heard about and wondered if anyone actually used in a detective story. Well, yes. Ronald tried not unsuccessfully to make it sound somewhat plausible and turning it into a locked room problem certainly helped towards that end. Another quasi-impossible situation I enjoyed is how one of the characters gets thrown out of the house and manages to sneak back in without getting caught or even spotted by the guards. It's cartoonishly clever. Something you can imagine Bugs Bunny doing to get into the house.

When it comes to the impossible crimes, Six Were to Die gives you, more or less, what can be expected from a pulp-style locked room mystery with a group of people under siege and dying under inexplicable circumstances – comparable to Brian Flynn's Invisible Death (1929) and Fearn's Account Settled (1949). Not always credible, as far as method goes, but always bubbling over with wildly imaginative, downright crazy ideas or tricks. Where it differentiates itself from other pulp stories like it is simply plot management. There's never more than a chapter between one of the impossible crimes taking place and it's solution, which made for a far tidier and tighter plot and story than had they accumulated until a lengthy explanation was needed. Not to mention adding to the overall mystery how a murderer can have the run of the place without getting caught or seen. It also cleared the way for the ending when it was time to abandoned any pretense of being a detective story and barreled full throttle into pulpville, which is where the story managed to loose me.

In the previous review, I noted that pulp writers like Ronald and Fearn wrote for a less demanding audience than the Golden Age aficionados who are discovering them today. Now I don't think anyone expects the rigor of a Golden Age mystery from a pulp novel nor will the outlandish nature of the locked room-tricks be a stumbling block for many, but after such a well written, nicely balanced and above all entertaining mystery I expected something slightly better from the conclusion. Something more inspired fitting everything that preceded it. And how the murderer had the run of the place is ridiculous. Something that's always tricky to pull of convincingly, but didn't buy it here at all. But it comes with the territory of the pulps. For every good, wildly imaginative or original idea, they do half a dozen things that makes most GAD fans want to pull out their hair at the roots.

Sorry to have to conclude this on a somewhat sour note, but I really did enjoy Six Were to Die right up until the last handful of chapters. Until then, Six Were to Die is an incredibly entertaining pulp mystery dispatching its cast of characters, left and right, under seemingly impossible circumstances and the ominous presence of the killer constantly looming over them – eating away at their nerves. It deserved a better ending. Just like Dr. Britling deserved a longer run as a series-character, because, once again, he shined as a leading character. Even his twin sister has a strong, off-page presence when she begins to exchange letters with her brother. So much more could have been done with them. However, I also realize the three Dr. Britling novelettes and this novel merely represents some of Ronald's earliest, tentative steps as a writer of pulp mysteries. Six Were to Die is perhaps not a rival to the plots of John Dickson Carr or John Rhode, but possesses all the promise, ingenuity and freshness to eventually deliver on that promise. So eagerly look forward to the coming reprints of Murder in the Family (1936), They Can't Hang Me (1938) and the "Michael Crombie" novel The Sealed Room Murder (1934).

2/23/24

Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023) by James Ronald

James Ronald was a Scottish-born writer of detective stories, pulp-style mysteries and thrillers, but, despite receiving high praise for his "ingenuity, freshness, and sharp sense of humour," Ronald passed into obscurity upon his death in 1972 – going out-of-print practically immediately. So nearly all of his work became scarce, often expensive collector items and, if they were not completely forgotten, mentioned every now or then in passing (see "99 Novels for a Locked Room Library"). That slowly began to change in the 2010s with the rise of the Golden Age mystery blogs.

The first to bring up James Ronald was John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, who reviewed They Can't Hang Me (1938) in 2013 and Death Croons the Blues (1934), The Sealed Room Murder (1934; as by "Michael Crombie") and The House of Horror (1935; as by "Michael Crombie") in 2019. Jim Noy, of The Invisible Event, began adding to the intrigue in 2018 with four and five-star reviews of Six Were to Die (1932), Murder in the Family (1936) and This Way Out (1939). So included Ronald's work in "Curiosity is Killing the Cat: Detective Novels That Need to Be Reprinted" on the strength of those reviews, but John turned up in the comments with some bad news. Moonstone Press tried and nearly succeeded in securing the rights to five of Ronald's novels, but family members put a stop to it ("...they do not have fond memories of the man and they would prefer if he were not back in print"). It looked as if Ronald was doomed to obscurity for the foreseeable future and only sheer serendipity would get me a copy of Six Were to Die, The Sealed Room Murder or They Can't Hang Me.

Somehow, someway, Moonstone Press managed to resolve the dispute and secured the rights to not only five of those elusive, long out-of-print novels, but Ronald's entire body of works – covering everything from his early short stories to those ultra rare locked room mystery novels. A 14-volume reprint project scheduled to be published over the next two years!

Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023) was published last December and collected three pulp fiction novelettes, a short story and one of Ronald's elusive impossible crime novels. I also recommend you read the introduction by Chris Verner, son of Gerald Verner, who gives both background details about the author as well as the Herculean task in tracking down, piecing together and restoring all those stories ("a treasure hunt for lost tales"). Many of which were published under a retinue of pseudonyms in newspaper serials or obscure pulp magazines. Not to mention that a lot of his work exited in multiple, slightly differing versions from one publication to another. It reminded me of the exhaustive, decades-long archaeological detective work Philip Harbottle had to undertake to disentangle John Russell Fearn's labyrinthine publication history and tangle of pennames in order to get his work back in print. See, for example, Harbottle's 2017 guest-post "The Detective Fiction of John Russell Fearn."

I'm going to tackle this collection in two parts. First up are the three novelettes and short story. Six Were to Die is going to be discussed separately in the next post.

These three novelettes introduce a regrettably short-lived series-character, Dr. Daniel Britling. A short, slim and meticulously dressed police surgeon with a Vandyke beard and a pearl-gray fedora on his large head, "nothing of his association with crime or the police was suggested by his appearance," but Dr. Britling does more than merely examining bodies – playing "an active part in unravelling more than one mystery." Dr. Britling is a student of crime and acting as a quasi-official amateur detective a favorite pastime ("criminology was his hobby..."). Scotland Yard had to admit that whenever Dr. Britling "put his enterprising finger into the pie of criminal detection, he almost invariably pulled out the plum that the detective in charge had groped for in vain."

"The Green Ghost Murder," originally published in the April, 1931, issue of Hush Magazine introduces Dr. Britling and his twin sister, Eunice, who rented a furnished cottage in Carstow where Dr. Britling is recuperating from a bout with pneumonia. Eunice knows her brother's weakness for any kind of mystery and, as she expected, her brother becomes very interested in the news that the Green Ghost of Heaton Forest, "famous in local legend," has returned from nearly a century of slumber ("...to protest against the houses which now stand where its forest, dark and impenetrable, once stood?"). However, the problem of the mounting sightings of the luminous green ghost is not the primary problem of the story, which is easy to see through, but that makes it all the more baffling when the green ghost apparently stabs Carstow's leading bookmaker to death inside his garden. A murder that was witnessed by the victim's cook!

A great, promising and even clever setup as knowing who plays the ghost makes the murder seem even more baffling, but, as remarked elsewhere, "The Green Ghost Murder" is pure pulp fiction written against a hard deadline – polishing never took place. More importantly, they were written for a less demanding audience than the Golden Age aficionados that pour over these stories today. And the ending shows it as the story takes a sharp turn into pulpville! So not much here in terms of a proper detective story, but the two elderly Britling twins shine as characters in this story. For example, Dr. Britling has to deal with a nosy newspaper reporter who's desperate for an interview, but gets a hard no from the police surgeon, "if I allowed you to tell your readers how much cleverer than the police I am, do you suppose the police would ever allow me to 'nose' about the scene of a murder again?" ("they'd simply point to the body, allow me to make my examination, then lead me gently but firmly to the door"). What a waste, the Britlings only made a handful of appearances.

"Too Many Motives" predates the first story in this series, originally published in the April, 1930, issue of 20-Story Magazine, but Chris Verner suspects "The Green Ghost Murder" must have had "a preceding publication somewhere, or the story sat on the shelf." The publication histories of these pulp, or pulp adjacent, writers are practically detective stories by themselves. Anyway, the story begins with a birthday dinner in honor of an enormously wealthy financier, Mark Savile, who "was despised even by fellow-financiers" ("thousands of small investors lost their savings in the crash of his bubble company"). Savile's grim sense of humor tempted him to invite four men with a motive to kill him and spends the evening needling them, until one of them assaults him, but did he, or one of the other three, came back to finish the job? Dr. Britling is called upon to make sense of a murder with too many motives, but Ronald borrowed the solution from a Sherlock Holmes. A particular kind of solution I loath as much as others dislike Conan Doyle's "Birlstone Gambit." That being said, Ronald appears to be the first to have employed this particular variation on that now shopworn idea and some credit should go his way for not making it a locked room mystery. Only serious problem the story has is that the murderer's plan makes no sense, psychologically or simply long term (HUGE SPOILER/ROT13: Fnivyr jnf “n pbjneq ng urneg,” ohg fubg uvzfrys va gur urnq naq znqr gur tha qvfnccrne hc gur puvzarl va beqre gb pnfg rgreany fhfcvpvba ba gubfr sbhe vaabprag zra... Jul abg fvzcyl gnxr cbvfba juvyr gurl jrer qvavat naq svtugvat, orpnhfr gung tha vf tbvat gb or sbhaq fbbare be yngre. Naq gung jbhyq ehva gur ybat grez nvzf bs gur cyna. So not a personal favorite.

Fortunately, the next two stories are much better. "Find the Lady" was originally published in the May, 1931, issue of Hush Magazine and is the best of the three novelettes. Dr. Britling is asked by Lord Clavering to track down his niece, Lady Frances Dorian, who disappeared without a trace from the Royal Lancaster Hotel – where she had been living for some months. One day, she packed her belonging, settled the bill and went away. Yet, nobody saw her leave the hotel. The aunt of Lord Clavering and Lady Frances, Lady Agatha Dorian, is screaming blue murder, but refuses to call in Scotland Yard. Lord Clavering asks Dr. Britling to nose around the hotel and he's only to eager to oblige ("I love to dabble in these things, but I have no wish to profit by my hobby"). So the police surgeon and hobby-horse detective begins to nose around the hotel and questions everyone from the manager and doorman to the chambermaid and switchboard operator, which comes with a stronger spot of clueing than the previous two stories. Not the most intricate or complicated detective stories written in 1930s, but not too bad on whole and loved Dr. Britling acting as a spirited, buzzing amateur sleuth. Note that "Find the Lady" also has some Sherlockian echoes ("The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax," 1911), but that's all they are. Just echoes. Ronald wrote a different story around the idea of a Lady Frances vanishing from a hotel.

"Blind Man's Bluff," originally printed in the October 5, 1929, publication of the Daily Mail and is Ronald's first published short story. It's not a detective or pulp-style mystery, but a simple, very well done crime story. Martin Longworth is a blind man who learned over the decades to rely on his other senses and his sharp hearing noticed a few familiar characteristics about the new owner of the local tobacco shop. But where has he heard them before? And in what connection? Ronald only has about 10 pages to tell the story, but Martin Longworth feels as fleshed out and convincing as Baynard Kendrick's blind detective, Captain Duncan Maclain. So not bad for a first stab at the crime-and detective story.

Going into this collection, I expected "The Green Ghost Murder" and "Too Many Motives" to emerge as my unsurprising favorites. After all, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes or Nostradamus to know whether, or not, something is to my liking. And those two novelettes appeared to fit the bill. But no. "Find the Lady" and "Blind Man's Bluff" proved to be the two unexpected standouts. Still a very mixed bag of tricks with the characters of Dr. Daniel Britling, Eunice Britling and Martin Longworth carrying the plots. So these four shorter works have not entirely convinced me of Ronald's reported genius as a mystery writer and crafty plotter, but the novel-length Six Were to Die is next on the list. Don't touch that dial and stay tuned.

2/19/24

The Meiji Guillotine Murders (1979) by Futaro Yamada

Late last year, I put together a list of ten "Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated" from Europe, Asia and the Americas, but, as noted in the introduction, the list could be entirely filled with the Japanese titles Ho-Ling Wong has discussed on his blog – enough to put together a top 100. One of those intriguing-sounding detective novels Ho-Ling has discussed over the years is Meiji dantodai (The Meiji Guillotine Murders, 1979) by "Futaro Yamada" (penname of Seiya Yamada). A collection of short, connected historical mystery stories or rather an episodic novel with the epilogue turning it into a complete narrative ("...never seen it done as good as here") praised by Ho-Ling as a masterpiece and one of the best mysteries he has ever read. So a translation seemed next to impossible when he reviewed the book in 2013. Fortunately, Pushkin Vertigo asked Ho-Ling for a list of (shin) honkaku recommendations for possible future translations and one of the suggestions was The Meiji Guillotine Murders.

Futaro Yamada was a writer best remembered in his native country for his historical fiction and ninja stories. Reportedly discovered by Edogawa Rampo, Yamada first short story, "Daruma-tōge no jiken" ("The Incident on Dharma Pass," 1947), bagged an award from Hôseki magazine. That short story was not Yamada's last dalliance with the detective story.

The Meiji Guillotine Murders is set in 1869 Tokyo, "although it had been renamed Tokyo, it was still, to be sure, the old capital of Edo," which is the first year of the Meiji Restoration that ended the reign of the shogunate and restored imperial rule – opening the country to the rest of the world. Until then, the country had been under the military dictatorship of the Tokugawa shogunate for two and a half centuries that enforced a policy of national isolation (*). A state of affairs rudely interrupted by the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's "Black Ships," in 1853, who forced a treaty on Japan opening it up to international trade and diplomacy. Naturally, these rapid changes were not welcomed by everyone, destabilized the sitting power and exploded in a full-blown rebellion known as the Boshin Civil War of 1868-69. The outcome of this civil war restored imperial rule in the young Emperor Meiji and the new government began a process of rapid Westernization, which causes even more social upheavals, political turmoil and, what can be generously termed, growing pains of the Meiji Restoration.

This short story collection-cum-novel takes place during the first year of that brave new era for Japan, but the government had their hands full. Not only had the country to rapidly catch up with the West, but they had to contend with political assassins, rebels and deeply-rooted corruption. So they reinstated the Imperial Prosecuting Office, "a revival of a Heian-period administration," created "to investigate and root out official corruption." There the three protagonists of The Meiji Guillotine Murders enter the picture.

Chief Inspector Toshiyoshi Kawaji is a real historical figure who was tasked with setting up and recruiting men for the new Japanese police force, which in the beginning comprised of several thousand men "charged with maintaining public order in the capital." Chief Inspector Keishirō Kazuki is his colleague and friendly rival ("in the best sense of the term, let's be rivals") who imported a guillotine from France, because "the old method of beheading by sword is on the way out," but "that French beheading block" is not all he brought back from Europe – returning with a golden-haired woman, Esmeralda Sanson. She's the ninth generation of the Sanson family of Parisian executioners and something of a spiritual medium. Every case ends with Esmeralda going into a trance and have the ghost of the victim explain everything happened. Always opening with the lines, "for the first time since arriving in the land of the dead... I can see the land of the living without hindrance." How's that for a setup?

Before delving into the story, it's important to keep in mind The Meiji Guillotine Murders is very different from most Japanese mysteries translated up until now. Particularly if you're only familiar what has been translated over the past 5-10 years. And, knowing some of my regular readers, the book requires some patience to get through.

First of all, The Meiji Guillotine Murders is, as noted before, an episodic novel structured like a short story collection. However, the book begins with two stories, "The Chief Inspectorate of the Imperial Prosecuting Office" and "Esmeraldo the Miko," merely laying the groundwork. They introduce the reader to the three main characters, sketching a picture of 1869 Tokyo and the French contraption getting erected on the execution ground at the Kodenma-chō jail. And getting tested on a couple of unfortunate criminals. After the introduction, the two Chief Inspectors of the Imperial Prosecuting Office get to investigate a handful of cases in five long-ish short stories divided in a setup (roughly 30 pages) and the discovery of the crime with its conclusion being covered in the remaining twenty-some pages. There's a wealth of detail, both historically and to the overarching story, in those preambles to murder. So discussing them in depth is impossible and will only look at the detective elements of those story.

"Kaidan tsukiji hotel kan" ("The Strange Incident at the Tsukiji Hotel") centers on the potential consequences of an unlawful execution coalescing around the titular hotel with a bell tower atop of its roof. A case culminating in a man being found at the bottom of the tower stairs, "abdomen clearly cut open and his innards spilling out," but the suspects who discovered the body had vowed never to kill again. Only other suspect possessed a rock solid alibi. The trick is ingeniously grotesque and agree with Ho-Ling it's something Soji Shimada could have dreamed up, but this story predated his first novel by several years. "America yori ai wo komete" ("From America with Love") has an original take on the no-footprints scenario: two rickshaws end up in the freezingly cold river drowning its sole occupant. Curiously enough, there are wheel tracks of the rickshaws in the snows, but "there are no footprints from the person pulling it" between them. I envisioned a very different solution to the impossibility, but a good and fun story also involving political assassinations, corruption and a haunted cemetery. "Eitaibashi no kubitsuribito" ("The Hanged Man at the Eitai Bridge") reads like a historical reimagining of Freeman Wills Crofts and his alibi-breaking, in which the victim is found hanging from the Eitai Bridge over the Sumida River and the murderer turns out to have a peach of an alibi. The solution is very clever with the period setting doubling as a smokescreen to the correct answer. A great example of the historical mystery in how the setting is used to build up the plot. "Engankyou ashikiri ezu" ("Eyes and Legs") and "Onore no kubi wo daku shitai" ("The Corpse That Cradled Its Own Head") do what so many Japanese detective stories enjoy doing, playing around with body parts. The former introduced a pair of binoculars to the capital and immediately a murder is observed through it ("they were cutting her flesh with a dagger and sawing right through the bone"), while the former toys around with severed heads of executed prisoners.

A hazy kind of vagueness began clouding the endings to those last two cases and made me wonder how, exactly, Yamada was planning to pull everything together in a tight, coherent narrative – which worried me for a second. It proved to be unnecessary as the last story, or chapter, "Seigi no seifu wa arieru ka" ("Can There Be a Just Government?") provided a conclusion that delivered on all fronts. I had some ideas in what direction the story could be headed and harbored certain suspicions against someone, but didn't imagine anything like this. A grand historical double play on (ROT13) gur yrnfg yvxryl fhfcrpg gebcr. More importantly, Yamada wrote and plotted a historical detective novel with crimes and motives that feel indigenous to that specific time and place in history.

I'm very picky when it comes to historical mysteries and impossible crime stories, because both obliges the author to do something with it. Preferably something good. I don't want a historical mystery where the setting only functions as period dressing or backdrop for the story and character. Nor do I want locked room mysteries with uninspired, routine solutions or tricks that belong back in the 19th century. So love historical impossible crime novels like John Dickson Carr's Captain Cut-Throat (1955), Robert van Gulik's The Red Pavilion (1961), Paul Doherty's A Murder in Thebes (1998) and more recently James Scott Byrnside's The Strange Case of the Barrington Hills Vampire (2020) and Jim Noy's The Red Death Murders (2022). You can add The Meiji Guillotine Murders to the list.

The Meiji Guillotine Murders is engrossing, richly detailed gem of a historical mystery novel that stands out due to it being structured like a collection of shorter stories, which allows it to deliver a stunner of an ending. Highly recommended. Just keep in mind The Meiji Guillotine Murders is very different from what most of you have come to expect from Japanese writers like Seishi Yokomizo and Yukito Ayatsuji.

*: Only exception to the strict policy of isolationism was the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which was their umbilical cord to the outside world. It's also the setting of the excellent Judge Ooka historical mystery novella "Een lampion voor een blinde" ("A Lantern for the Blind," 1973) by Dutch poet Bertus Aafjes. The ultimate "isolated island" mystery that deserves to be translated and should be bundled together with an English translation of Seicho Matsumoto's novella "Amusuterudamu-unga satsuyin jiken" ("The Amsterdam Canal Murder Case," 1969). A Dutch and Japanese writer writing detective stories that take place in each others countries is a great hook to hawk a pair of novellas.