Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes Archives

Looking Back: More of Miss Withers

classic mysteries, Funny Mysteries, GAD, Golden Age, Golden Age of Detective Fiction, Hildegarde Withers, impossible crimes, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, Looking Back, mysteries, mystery, Stuart Palmer Comments Off

Jun 132013

I have now read somewhat more than half of Stuart Palmer's books featuring Hildegarde Withers, the New York City schoolteacher who manages to spend a significant amount of her time solving murders with her (frequently frazzled) friend, homicide detective Oscar Piper. As a general rule, I really enjoy them - they're funny without being farcical, they often are built around so-called "impossible" crimes, and the central characters are thoroughly engaging.

I have reviewed several of these books, and you can find links to all the podcast audio reviews at this blog's backlist page (just scroll down to Stuart Palmer's name). Among my own favorites:

Murder on Wheels. The second Miss Withers novel, it features an impossible murder - right on Fifth Avenue, in the middle of a rush hour snowstorm;
Murder on the Blackboard. Another early outing, with a murder in the classroom across the hall from Hildy's room. Naturally, she has to get involved in the investigation. By the way, Palmer includes this wonderful description of Miss Withers in this book: "For those of my readers who are meeting Hildegarde Withers for the first time, let me inform them that she is in the neighborhood of forty – the close neighborhood – and that her face has something of the contour, and most of the characteristics, of a well-bred horse";
The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla, set in Mexico, moves Miss Withers and Inspector Piper to Mexico to deal with a spectacular and apparently impossible murder at a bullfight;
The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, which is the one I review this week, is among Palmer's best, combining a seemingly impossible murder - more than one, in fact - with some funny and smart scenes set in the movie business in Hollywood of the 1940s.

The links above, by the way, will take you to my blog entries about these specific titles. Now that The Mysterious Press and Open Road Integrated Media have released 16 of Palmer's novels as e-books, I strongly urge you, if you haven't already done so, to meet Miss Withers and Inspector Piper. They're really worth knowing.

“Fatal Descent”

Carter Dickson, Cecil Street, classic mysteries, Funny Mysteries, GAD, Golden Age, Golden Age of Detective Fiction, impossible crimes, John Dickson Carr, John Rhode, locked room mysteries, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, mysteries, mystery, Reading Challenges Comments Off

May 192013

You might think of it as a disgruntled author's revenge: an arrogant and well-disliked publisher gets into his small, private elevator on the top floor of his office building. The door locks automatically and the elevator descends. The publisher can even be seen through windows in the locked access doors, and he is standing in the elevator as it descends. The elevator never stops. Yet suddenly a gunshot is heard, and when the elevator car reaches the ground floor, the publisher is dead - shot through the heart. And there is no way anyone could possibly have shot him in that elevator, especially as there is no gun to be found either in the car or in the elevator shaft.

Impossible? Why of course! Welcome to Fatal Descent, by Carter Dickson and John Rhode - or, to give them their correct names, John Dickson Carr and Cecil Street. Both authors were masters of the impossible crime novel as well as being friends - and they collaborated on just this one book, in 1939. Fatal Descent is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

Fatal Descent is a fascinating mystery, with two sleuths who team up to solve it. One, the Police Surgeon, Dr. Horatio Glass, is very much the type of detective favored by John Dickson Carr - full of ideas that give elegant solutions to impossible problems, brilliant in their conception and flawed only in that they are invariably wrong. Chief Inspector David Hornbeam is a realist who seeks the scientific explanations for crime, and he is quite representative of the kind of sleuth that Street wrote about under his "John Rhode" pen-name. Between them, they will eventually solve the case - but only after a second murder.

It’s a fine story, written with wit and good humor, quite fairly clued for the reader who can find the hints, and with some first-rate characters. It’s a pity that Street and Carr only wrote this one mystery together. Readers who enjoy a good impossible crime story really should read Fatal Descent. It’s been out of print for a while, but there is now an e-book edition available.

This is another entry in Bev's My Reader's Block blog Vintage Mysteries Reading Challenge. As this 1939 mystery was originally published under the title Drop to His Death, I am entering it in the category called "A Mystery by Any Other Name," a book that has been published under more than one title.

Unlocking the Locked Room

classic mysteries, impossible crimes, John Pugmire, Locked Room International, locked room mysteries, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, LRI, mysteries, mystery, Paul Halter, Web/Tech, Weblogs Comments Off

Apr 102013

One of the genres I most enjoy is the locked room mystery and its broader implementation as the "impossible crime" story. All of Clyde B. Clason's works fall into that sphere. So do most of the works of John Dickson Carr, the acknowledged master of the field. Many other mystery authors, from the Golden Age and beyond, have written in the genre, with varying degrees of success.

So it's important, I think, to recognize that there are still authors writing today who specialize in locked room detective stories. Many of them, unfortunately, do not write in English, and translations are not always easy to find.

Enter translator John Pugmire, whom I mentioned earlier on this blog for his terrific work translating the contemporary French locked-room mystery author, Paul Halter. Pugmire now has begun a website devoted to the genre, called Locked Room International. I like the way he defines the genre:

"What is a locked room mystery? It is ideally a mystery which follows Golden Age Rules about providing fair clues to the reader and also poses the question: how was it done? A "locked room" is a special case of the more general "impossible crime," in which one or more victims are discovered dead in what appear to be impossible circumstances (hermetically sealed room, no footprints in the snow, inaccessible site, etc.) It makes no pretense to be probable, no attempt to analyze the human condition, and no effort to probe the detective's foibles. Its purpose is purely and simply to baffle while entertaining. It challenges the mind, not the heart or the spirit."

The site is still pretty basic, and we are promised additions and improvements as it is developed. It's not primarily a blog. Locked Room International is involved in publishing (as print-on-demand and/or e-book editions) good, English-language translations of locked-room masterpieces by Paul Halter and others; there are hints that we may eventually see translated versions from a modern Japanese master of the form.

The site is well worth a visit from anyone interested in the genre. I have more Halter books in my ever-massive "To Be Read" pile, and I'm looking forward to them and other LRI books.

Hat tip to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction mail group on Yahoo, which alerted me to the existence of this new LRI website.

“Blind Drifts”

classic mysteries, GAD, Golden Age, Golden Age of Detective Fiction, ILAM, ILoveAMystery Newsletter; locked rooms, impossible crimes, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, mysteries, mystery, Reading Challenges Comments Off

Apr 082013

When one of the directors of the Virgin Queen Gold Mine was shot, deep inside the mine, it happened in front of seven witnesses. Unfortunately, none of them apparently saw the shot fired, nor did they have any idea who might have fired it. And there was no sign of a gun. It was, to be blunt, an impossible situation. So it was probably a good thing that one of the witnesses on hand was a professor of Roman history and amateur detective named Theocritus Lucius Westborough, a man who had earned something of a reputation for solving impossible crime puzzles. He does so again in "Blind Drifts," a 1937 "impossible crime" novel by Clyde B. Clason which is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

Professor Westborough, having inherited a large amount of stock in the Virgin Queen mine from his brother, finds himself at the mine in Baddington, Colorado and caught in the middle of a power struggle between two groups of directors seeking control of the mine. The more he investigates, the more he finds himself caught up in the remarkable violence that seems to befall some of the key players in the power struggle. Another of the mine’s directors has vanished, and may be the victim of foul play. That director’s daughter has also vanished, last having been seen walking onto the campus of the local university – and apparently vanishing. As the situation grows more complicated and dangerous, the local sheriff is more than happy to have assistance from Professor Westborough.

In the 1930s, writing during America's Golden Age of Detective Fiction, Clyde B. Clason made a reputation for himself as an author with a knack for coming up with ingenious locked room/impossible crime situations. Although I find his stories are less exciting than those of John Dickson Carr, whose gift for creating eerie atmospheres was unequalled, I think Clason's books about Professor Westborough are clever and quite enjoyable. "Blind Drifts" takes the reader into a very unusual world - a world of gold mining, drifts, adits, crosscuts, stopes, vugs, strikes and more. The action is fairly slow to start, but once it picks up and the bodies start falling, and believe me they do, it moves to a good, tight conclusion.

"Blind Drifts" is another book read for the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge under way at Bev's Reader's Block blog. I'm putting it in the category called Amateur Night: a book with a "detective" who is not a P.I., police officer, official.

It's also another book which I have reviewed for the I Love a Mystery newsletter, edited by Sally Powers, who has graciously given me her permission to use portions of that review here and on my podcast. She also provided me with a copy of the new Rue Morgue Press edition of "Blind Drifts" for my review.

Vintage Mystery Challenge: Crispin’s “Case of the Gilded Fly”

classic mysteries, Funny Mysteries, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, mysteries, mystery, Reading Challenges, vintage mystery reading challenge Comments Off

Mar 272013

Here's another book, reviewed here earlier this year, that should be noted as part of the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge over on the Bev's Readers' Block blog.

First published in 1944, "The Case of the Gilded Fly," by Edmund Crispin, was the first mystery to feature the sleuthing talents of Oxford University Professor Gervase Fen. It is the story of murder among a theatrical troupe - an apparently impossible murder, in a locked room. The victim apparently was shot at point-blank range...but witnesses are prepared to swear that nobody but the victim was in the room. Yet suicide was equally impossible, not least because there's no gun in the room. As one of the police officers observes, rather gloomily, Fen proves pretty clearly that it couldn't have been suicide, while other witnesses prove that it couldn't have been murder, so the only obvious solution must be that it never happened in the first place.

As with all of Crispin's novels, "The Case of the Gilded Fly" has some first-rate touches of humor, as well as some truly horrifying scenes. The writing is wonderful, the characters are entertaining and distinctive, and Professor Fen is in his glory.

I am entering this in the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge in category 16, Locked Rooms. I do recommend checking out some of the other books that are being read and reviewed by other participants in the challenge - or, perhaps, you'd like to join in the challenge yourself? You'll find details at the link.

“The Nightingale Gallery”

classic mysteries, Historical Mysteries, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, Modern Masters, mysteries, mystery, Paul C. Doherty, Paul Doherty, Paul Harding, Weblogs Comments Off

Mar 112013

Time to keep a New Year's resolution. At the beginning of the year, I promised readers that I would try to start talking about newer authors who are still writing what we like to call traditional mysteries - mysteries with puzzles, where the plots are at least as important as the psychological trappings of the characters.

With that promise in mind, I'd like to present British historian and author Paul Doherty, an amazingly prolific writer, the author of more than 80 books so far, with several series of historical mysteries to his credit - and with a healthy respect for the classic traditions of great mystery writing.

Consider the case of "The Nightingale Gallery," published in 1991, the first of a dozen books to feature Brother Athelstan, a Dominican friar and the assistant to the King's Coroner, Sir John Cranston, in late-14th century London. "The Nightingale Gallery is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

In “The Nightingale Gallery,” a wealthy merchant, Sir Thomas Springall, is murdered, apparently by having drunk from a chalice filled with poisoned wine. The murderer, it appears, was Sir Thomas’s servant, who had quarreled with his master earlier in the day – and, after giving his master the poisoned drink, the servant apparently hanged himself in a fit of remorse. It is far too pat and easy a solution for Brother Athelstan and Sir John to accept – particularly as there are more mysterious deaths to be accounted for. And, as they investigate, it becomes clear that there is a good deal more at stake than just the murder of a rich businessman – for it could involve a struggle for control of the English throne.

This story takes place in a vibrant London presented richly enough to become almost a character itself in the book. Doherty is a historian and the headmaster of a high school in Woodford Green, Essex. In this series of mysteries called collectively "The Sorrows of Brother Athelstan," Doherty takes readers into medieval London - a place of considerable crime, squalor, filth, with occasional intervals of hope and cheer. You can smell the stench of Doherty's London as you read the books.

Paul Doherty is new to me, but I intend to read a lot more of his books and try his different series. I was led to him by the blogger who calls himself "Puzzle Doctor" at the blog called "In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel"; you'll find his thumbnail sketches of some of the stories about Brother Athelstan and Sir John Cranston here.

"The Nightingale Gallery" was originally published under the pseudonym "Paul Harding," but it has been reissued under Paul Doherty's name. It doesn't appear to be in print, but it is readily available as an e-book for Kindle and, I presume, other formats as well.

Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge I: No Coffin for the Corpse

classic mysteries, Golden Age, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, mysteries, mystery, Reading Challenges, vintage mystery reading challenge Comments Off

Feb 232013

As I noted in the last post, I have some catching up to do on Bev's Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge. Let me start with the book that was reviewed here last Monday: "No Coffin for the Corpse," by Clayton Rawson. This mystery falls into the challenge's Category 21: Things That Go Bump in the Night: a mystery with something spooky, creepy, gothic.

Oh yes, it's spooky all right. As I noted earlier in the week, the mystery at the heart of this excellent "impossible crime" story deals with what appears to be the ghost of a murdered man - a ghost that apparently can walk through walls, materialize and disappear inside a house where the rooms are wired with alarms that never sound when the ghost appears...and the ghost apparently can commit a murder in front of witnesses and then vanish through a locked door. Creepy enough? It's enough to keep The Great Merlini occupied uncovering the truth behind the ghostly goings-on...much to the reader's delight.

“No Coffin for the Corpse”

classic mysteries, Golden Age, impossible crimes, locked room mysteries, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, mysteries, mystery Comments Off

Feb 182013

As a general rule, I suppose, mystery readers expect the bodies of fictional murder victims to behave with some decorum. Granted, a clever writer may occasionally arrange for a body to be moved, the better to hide it; in one notorious book, Edmund Crispin managed not only to dispose of a body but also the entire toy shop in which it was found. But, as experienced mystery readers, we know those disappearances are temporary; there is no question that the victim, once dead, remains immobile.

But what if the victim is quite clearly dead - and yet his ghost appears to be wreaking considerable havoc in the neighborhood? That appears to be the case in the rather unnerving - and quite well written - 1942 mystery, "No Coffin for the Corpse," by Clayton Rawson. Here, we have a man, apparently killed in a fight, buried by several witnesses...but who seems intent on coming back and terrorizing the people responsible for his death. "No Coffin for the Corpse" is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

The central problem here is the constant reappearance of what appears to be the ghost of the man who was killed. He appears and disappears inside a house wired with a sophisticated alarm system, yet the alarm is not triggered. He appears to have the ability to travel through walls, to escape from locked rooms - and to commit murder in front of witnesses and then disappear.

It is up to Rawson's detective, the stage magician known as The Great Merlini, to explain what is really going on in this classic "impossible crime" mystery. Rawson was one of the four founders of the Mystery Writers of America, and he was a skilled magician himself. The reader will learn a great deal about some of the tricks of the trade in the course of this mystery. But before it is over, I suspect many readers will echo the sentiments voiced by the story's narrator: “What we all needed at that moment more than anything else was a week or two in bed in a quiet secluded sanitarium with no visitors allowed.”

Rawson only wrote four novel-length books about The Great Merlini, but many readers believe "No Coffin for the Corpse" was the best of them. It's a fascinating puzzle, and the reader can only hang on for dear life and follow Merlini as he struggles to explain an apparent ghost and an impossible murder. The book is hard to find in print editions, but The Mysterious Press, through Open Road Integrated Media, has released it in electronic formats for the Kindle and other popular readers. If you enjoy classic locked room puzzles, this should be on your reading list.

"The Case of the Gilded Fly"

classic mysteries, Funny Mysteries, impossible crimes, locked rooms, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, mysteries, mystery Comments Off

Jan 072013

Witnesses hear a gunshot. Investigating, they find the victim lying alone in a locked room, gun next to the body. Powder burns suggest suicide - and, besides, witnesses outside the room insist it would have been impossible for anyone to enter or leave that room without being seen. So the police are sure it was a suicide.

Not Gervase Fen, Professor of English Literature at Oxford University. He is certain it is murder - and, to the evident distress of the police, he sets out not only to prove his point but also to discover who did what to whom - and how. (With accident ruled out, suicide and murder both seemingly impossible, one police inspector observes, gloomily, "The only conclusion is...that the thing never happened at all.")

That's the plot, in a nutshell, of a remarkably high-spirited mystery, "The Case of the Gilded Fly," by Edmund Crispin, the 1945 mystery that introduced Professor Fen to readers who found the combination of quirky humor, intelligence, fascinating characters and a complex, often-twisting plot absolutely irresistable. "The Case of the Gilded Fly" is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

The plot centers on the members of the Oxford Repertory Theatre and the people associated with the group, along with a number of outsiders, including Professor Fen. As the blurb on one edition of this book notes, "Being a Don notwithstanding, Fen's true interest is police work. Fittingly, the real interest of Sir Richard Freeman, Oxford's Chief Constable, is English literature. Each has developed a fine scorn for the other's reputed field of competence."

That's true enough, and the scenes involving the two men (and Fen's persistent annoying of the Chief Constable) add considerably to the humor. Crispin, particularly in the earliest Fen books, has a wonderful way of throwing the reader off his/her stride by sudden mood shifts. Crispin also provides some inside jokes for mystery readers to enjoy; at one point, talking with his friend (and Watson in this book), Nigel Blake, Fen suddenly stops:

He broke off, staring blankly in front of him. "Lord, Lord, what a fool I've been! And yes - it fits - absolutely characteristic. Heaven grant Gideon Fell never becomes privy to my lunacy; I should never hear the end of it." He gaped.

Nigel regarded him coldly, "Stop this exhibition," he said, "which you know perfectly well is unintelligible to everyone but yourself, and let's go."

That's pretty typical. Crispin has Fen invoke (as if they were real people) fictional detectives, including J. D. Carr's Dr. Fell. He does so, as Nigel Blake suggests, to tweak the reader's nose.

If it sounds as if I'm thoroughly enchanted by Fen and by Crispin, well, yes. I am. "The Case of the Gilded Fly" has flaws, but who cares? It is available in a very good edition from the Felony & Mayhem Press. If you have a good sense of humor and enjoy a fine "impossible crime" mystery (and don't mind having your nose tweaked a bit by a playful author), make it a point to find and read "The Case of the Gilded Fly."

Kindling Books

Amazon Kindle, classic mysteries, ebooks, General Suggestions, Golden Age, kindle, Locked Rooms/Impossible Crimes, Looking Back, mysteries, mystery, Web/Tech Comments Off

Dec 242012

Did Santa (or anyone else, for any reason or holiday whatsoever) bring you a new Kindle from Amazon this year? Yes, I know there are other models of ebook readers, but I have to stick to what I know, which is the Kindle. And if you have a new one, or even an old one, you may be looking for some ideas about Kindling books - that library of traditional mysteries you've always wanted to carry around with you but never had enough baggage room before.

Well, here are a few suggestions to help you load your Kindle with some fine reading material for a long winter's night or two.

To begin at the beginning, why not "bulk up" and get The Classic Mystery Collection (100+ books and stories) for just $2.99. That includes ALL of the original Sherlock Holmes stories - the four novels and the 56 short stories. It has Hercule Poirot's debut appearance in Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" and also her first book about Tommy and Tuppence, "The Secret Adversary." Two of Chesterton's books of Father Brown short stories are here, along with "The Man Who Was Thursday." Ever read E. C. Bentley's "Trent's Last Case"? It's here. And a whole lot more. Sure, there's a lot of "stuff" you may not like - or you may discover some new authors whose works demand exploration. It's worth a shot.

One of my all-time favorite mysteries, still at the top of most lists of "impossible crime" books, is John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man, originally published in the U. S. as "The Three Coffins," now newly re-released as a Kindle book. if you have never read this one, you are in for a treat. What is it about? In the very first paragraph, Carr sets out this challenge to the reader:

“To the murder of Professor Grimaud, and later the equally incredible crime in Cagliostro Street, many fantastic terms could be applied – with reason. Those of Dr. Fell’s friends who like impossible situations will not find in his casebook any puzzle more baffling or more terrifying. Thus: two murders were committed, in such fashion that the murderer must not only have been invisible; but lighter than air. According to the evidence, this person killed his first victim and literally disappeared. Again according to the evidence, he killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at either end; yet not a soul saw him, and no footprint appeared in the snow.”

And that's exactly what you will get.

Another of Carr's impossible crime masterpieces, written as Carter Dickson and featuring Carr's other great creation, Sir Henry Merrivale, is "The Judas Window," with one of the nicest locked room explanations you'll ever encounter. As Sir Henry reminds you throughout, the solution was simply that the murderer used a "Judas Window" to carry out the crime in a locked and bolted room. What's that, you may ask? Why almost every room has one...if you know where to look...

And there's so much more...for example:

The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers, my favorite Lord Peter Wimsey book;
The House Without a Key, by Earl Derr Biggers, the book that introduced the great Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan;
The Roman Hat Mystery, starring Ellery Queen, the detective, and written by Ellery Queen, the writer (Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee), featuring a murder in a crowded Broadway theater.

I'm sure you get the idea. There are lots and lots of mysteries eagerly awaiting placement on your Kindle; you can build a TBR pile that is the envy of those of us with teetering hard copy piles. The cold, dark and stormy nights are approaching - be sure your ebooks are ready!

(Disclosure to keep the gummint happy: if you should actually buy something via one of my links to Amazon, I get a few cents - literally - as a commission. Now don't you feel better for knowing that?)

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