Classic Mysteries

"Fatal Descent"

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.

 

Withers on the Vine

Some very good news today from Open Road Media, a company which has been making a significant number of Golden Age mysteries, both from the US and from England, available in electronic editions. The latest author to benefit from this treatment is Stuart Palmer, whose series detective, Hildegarde Withers, is one of my perennial favorites. Palmer frequently referred to her more-or-less affectionately as "that meddlesome old battleaxe," but Hildy Withers is nobody's fool, and she makes an interesting team with New York City Inspector Oscar Piper, with whom she maintains a rather prickly friendship.

Palmer created the character of Hildegarde Withers with actress Edna May Oliver in mind, In fact, Oliver did star as Hildy in several popular movies in the mid-1930s, opposite James Gleason as Inspector Piper.

As a general rule, the stories are well-plotted and told with some nice humorous touches. I've already reviewed nine of Palmer's books on this blog, and you can find a full list on the backlist page - just scroll down (the authors are listed alphabetically). I'll be reviewing more books from the series, now that Open Road is making them available. If you haven't met Hildegarde Withers...now is the time! I should mention that Open Road is also publishing some additional Stuart Palmer titles that do not have Hildy - I'll be looking forward to trying them as well.

"Make No Bones"

With the annual Malice Domestic conference coming up in less than three weeks, I thought it was high time that I made the acquaintance of some of the fine authors of traditional mysteries who will be honored at the event. One of the honorees this year will be Aaron Elkins, who will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, and I thought it would be good to start by reading one of the books in his primary series featuring the "Skeleton Detective," Dr. Gideon Oliver. Have I been missing a lot?

Well...frankly...yes. I may be late to the party, but I found Dr. Oliver a most enjoyable companion, as he led me through a rudimentary appreciation of forensic anthropology, the scientific study of human remains, in an often funny, if sometimes grisly, mystery.

I found a good example of what that means - and how Gideon Oliver puts together the fragments of a mysterious death to reveal a pretty shocking crime - in "Make No Bones," originally published in 1991, and the seventh book in Elkins' continuing series. It's the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

In "Make No Bones," members of the Western Association of Forensic Anthropologists are gathering for their biennial get-together - what the organizer calls the group’s "eagerly anticipated bone bash and weenie roast." It’s a combination of a scientific business conference, with academic discussions of forensic science and anthropology, together with a social gathering. The problem, this year, is that the organizer has chosen to hold it at Whitebark Lodge, in Oregon, where the association was formed, ten years earlier. That original ill-fated conference had ended in tragedy, as Albert Evan Jasper, called the “dean of American forensic anthropologists,” died in a fiery bus crash. As the scientists gather again a decade later at Whitebark Lodge, there will be unpleasant surprises in store – not to mention murders, old and new to be solved. It will be up to Gideon Oliver, working with his wife, Julie, and their friend, FBI Agent John Lau, to unravel a grisly set of clues to reveal a deadly secret.

There's a fair amount of police procedure here, and some insight into how these forensic scientists go about finding clues in a handful of bones or bone fragments. But it's also a traditional mystery, with considerable fair play and some very nicely hidden clues. And there's a lot of humor - sometimes very dark, to be sure, but also quite funny. I thoroughly enjoyed "Make No Bones," and I'm looking forward to meeting Aaron Elkins and hearing him speak at Malice Domestic.

Vintage Mystery Challenge: Crispin's "Case of the Gilded Fly"

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.

Glad About Gladys Mitchell

More good news this week about still another classic author now showing up in e-book editions. One of my regular readers, Joan Kyler, writes to remind me that Amazon.com has made a dozen mysteries by Gladys Mitchell available as Kindle e-books.

Gladys Mitchell is something of an acquired taste for most American readers. Her primary character, Dame Beatrice Bradley, a criminologist and psychiatrist, appeared in a series of more than sixty books, beginning in 1929 and lasting well into the 1980s. Mrs. Bradley is a marvelously eccentric - but shrewd, intelligent and generally rather sympathetic - character. In the U. K., Mitchell was always considered the equal of the other so-called "Crime Queens" of the Golden Age between the World Wars, but her books never really caught on in the U. S., and only about a third of them were ever published here.

British viewers were treated to some television adaptations of the Mrs. Bradley stories, starring Diana Rigg as Mrs. Bradley. I haven't seen them, and I love Diana Rigg, but I have trouble picturing her as Mrs. Bradley, a woman who is renowned for her reptilian looks and appalling fashion sense. She also has a uniquely personal viewpoint on crime and punishment, even going so far as to commit murder herself. And yet, Mitchell's writing is so filled with quirky (and sometimes VERY dark) humor that Mrs. Bradley comes across as truly likeable. In one novel, for example, speaking to a possible suspect, Mitchell writes: "'I warn you, you’d better stay here,' Mrs. Bradley continued, eyeing him with the maternal anxiety of a boa constrictor which watches its young attempting to devour their first donkey." My own sense of humor is quirky enough to really enjoy that kind of thing. As they say, your mileage may vary, depending on your tolerance for English eccentricity.

The Rue Morgue Press has republished some of Mitchell's better titles in trade paperback editions, giving some their first American publication ever. The addition of a dozen titles for the Kindle at a very affordable price may introduce Mrs. Bradley to a new generation of readers.

"Rest You Merry"

All right, here we are at the end of January. Have your neighbors - the ones with the unbelievably garish Christmas displays on their house - taken the decorations down yet? No? Then here's a mystery that may help you survive until they do.

It's called "Rest You Merry," by Charlotte MacLeod, and it is a very funny, very well-written mystery about Peter Shandy, Professor of Horticulture at Balaclava Agricultural College in New England. It is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

For many years, Balaclava Agricultural College has earned a considerable amount of money by having a winter festival of lights and sound generally called "the grand illumination" - with all the residents of the area around the college decorating and over-decorating their homes with garish lights and playing recordings of holiday music. Well, all the residents except Professor Shandy. He's not anti-holiday, he just doesn't like all the noise and nonsense. But he is constantly pressured to break down and load up the decorations - with much of the pressure coming from his busybody neighbor, Jemima Ames. Finally, Shandy snaps. He hires a team of electricians and decorators to put up the largest, most garish, most brightly-lit, blinking and twinkling decorations anywhere, loads up a sound system with loud holiday music, carefully turns everything on full-blast, locks the controls (so that nobody can turn them off) - and leaves home on vacation.

Unfortunately for him, the ship on which he is cruising breaks down, so he must return home - where he finds, inside his house, the body of that busybody neighbor. The police think she died from falling off a ladder while trying to turn off his display, but the professor is sure it is murder.

Do I have to tell you who's right?

And that is just the beginning of a very amusing, very cozy mystery by Charlotte MacLeod. In the course of her writing career, she turned out  some 30 books, including several series. "Rest You Merry" was the first of ten books to feature Professor Shandy. MacLeod's books are very definitely "cozies" by definition - there's little in the way of violence or sex, with everything taking place well offstage, and there's a lot of humor. There's also a pretty good mystery as part of it all. If you enjoy the cozy style, you will almost certainly enjoy Charlotte MacLeod's books. Many are out of print, though there seem to be plenty of used copies available. The Mysterious Press and Open Road Media are bringing her novels back as e-books, and "Rest You Merry" is available in a variety of formats, including one for the Amazon Kindle.

"The Case of the Gilded Fly"

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."

 

"Laurels Are Poison"

Are you acquainted with Mrs. Bradley? Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, noted psychiatrist, frequently employed by the police as a criminal investigator? Mrs. Bradley does not laugh, she "cackles." Her features have frequently been described by her author, Gladys Mitchell, as "reptilian," even as a "benevolent crocodile"; her students and other acquaintances often refer to her as "Mrs. Croc." It is safe to say that Mrs. Bradley is one of the most original and unusual protagonists to come down to us from the so-called Golden Age of Detective Fiction in England.

Mitchell's books about Mrs. Bradley - more than 60 of them - are something of an acquired taste, but to those of us who have been captivated by Mrs. Bradley's odd behavior, her belief that witchcraft has its uses, her insistence on doing things her way (even, on at least one occasion, committing murder herself), she is a marvelous companion. Take the events in "Laurels Are Poison," first published in 1942, which is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. It is said to have been Mitchell's favorite among her own books. You can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

In "Laurels Are Poison," we find Mrs. Bradley acting as the Warden - the person in charge - of a residence hall at the Cartaret Training College, where young women are trained to become teachers. The previous Warden unaccountably disappeared one night - simply wandered off and vanished - and Mrs. Bradley has been asked to move in and see if she can figure out what happened.

To that end, she enlists three of the students (who refer to themselves throughout as "The Three Musketeers") to help in her search. And there are more inexplicable phenomena, including a variety of apparent pranks, some innocent, others quite dangerous. Eventually, of course, there is murder.

All of which, I fear, gives very little idea of the general mayhem that is going on in this highly enjoyable book. It is enjoyable, that is, if you enjoy some of the extreme forms of English eccentricity. The writing is high-spirited, frequently funny, sometimes grimly so. Some of the events are quite surreal, if fascinating - take the discovery, for example, of a female drowning victim's corsets floating in the river. There are occasional attacks against Mrs. Bradley, too. And, as is often the case with Gladys Mitchell, while some events are quite thoroughly explained, others sort of...well, just happen, and the reader is left to go back and figure out precisely how, when and why.

During Gladys Mitchell's lifetime and her remarkably prolific and long writing career - her first book appeared in 1929, her last in 1984, after her death - remarkably few of her books about Mrs. Bradley were published in the United States. I think it's the occasional runs into the surreal and the amazing eccentricities of Mrs. Bradley and the other characters that may explain why she never really caught on among many American readers. But I am delighted to find some of her books, such as "Laurels Are Poison," being republished by the Rue Morgue Press and others. In fact, this book - and other Mitchells - are now available in a Kindle edition for Amazon.

I have written in some more detail about this book in a recent edition of Sally Powers's excellent "I Love a Mystery" Newsletter, and I thank her for letting me re-review it here.

"The Lucky Stiff"

If I recommend a book that is hardboiled and grimly noir, it could have been written by any one of a pretty large number of writers. If I recommend a book that is hardboiled and grimly noir and unbelievably funny, it is virtually certain that I have only one author in mind: Craig Rice. Writing in the 1940s and 1950s, Rice turned out a series of stories and novels that combined hardboiled and sometimes grim mystery with screwball comedy.

For a perfect example of what sounds like an unlikely marriage of styles, try Rice's 1945 novel, "The Lucky Stiff." It features a trio of central characters who appeared in many of Rice's books: Chicago lawyer John J. Malone and his two friends, small-time press agent Jake Justus and Jake's by-this-time-in-the-series wife, Helene. "The Lucky Stiff" is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

The book begins in a cell on death row, where a young woman named Anna Marie is about to be executed for a murder she did not commit. When the guards come to take her to the electric chair, she believes her life is over. Instead, they take her to the Warden's office, where he informs her that the real murderer has just made a death-bed confession which clears her.

Grateful? Not Anna Marie. She forces the warden and her lawyer to release a story saying she has died in the electric chair, the confession coming too late to save her. She intends to reappear as a ghost, to haunt the crooks responsible for the murder and to get revenge on them.

And she does - with the help of Malone and the Justuses. And, in the course of the increasingly surreal and bizarre events, there are several more murders, a reasonable amount of crooked dealing, numerous fist-fights (often involving Malone), and - incidentally - increasingly hilarious plot twists alternating with situations that really could define the "noir" genre. If you don't think there can be anything hilariously funny about a bomb going off in a funeral home...well, read "The Lucky Stiff" and find out.

Writing at the Golden Age of Detection wiki, critic Mike Grost observes, "Almost everything that happens in a Rice novel is surrealistic. The characters, plots, settings and incidents all seem intended to surprise the reader with imaginative newness, and to shake up his or her preconceptions about reality." I think that's what you'll find in "The Lucky Stiff." It's most easily available in e-book format, although there seem to be a fair number of used paperback versions as well; your independent mystery book dealer can help, or try the above link to Amazon's Kindle and independent dealers.

Looking Back: "Punch with Care"

I've mentioned in my review this week that I generally prefer the later Asey Mayo books in Phoebe Atwood Taylor's series. One of those, which I reviewed here a couple of years ago, was "Punch with Care ," originally published in 1946 and one of the last books in the series. I also did an audio review of the book for the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

"Punch with Care" manages to be both quite funny and a pretty good mystery at the same time. First, Asey Mayo finds a body lying in a private railroad car belonging to a local rail enthusiast. She's holding a green ticket, neatly punched. Asey begins to investigate...and the body disappears. And we're off and running on a track that leads to kidnapping, another murder - and some odd clues.

There are plenty of laughs, so if murder isn't your idea of a joke, you may want to skip it. But it really shows off Asey Mayo at his best - and Phoebe Atwood Taylor at hers.