"The Duel of Shadows"

Here's a collection of "impossible crime" stories with a fascinating twist: most of the "impossibilies" in the stories are resolved by science - obscure science on occasion, to be sure, but science none the less. The stories may be found in "The Duel of Shadows: The Extraordinary Cases of Barnabas Hildreth," by Vincent Cornier, and the collection is the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can hear the full review by clicking here.

What kind of "impossibilities" are we talking about? Well, in the title story of the collection, "The Duel of Shadows," a man is shot and wounded by a bullet which had been fired only once - in a duel, more than two hundred years earlier. In "The Mantle that Laughed," not only does an ancient cloak give off an eerie laugh, it also masks a most bizarre method of murder. In "The Stone Ear," a murder apparently is committed through the poisoning of a glass held by the victim - a glass which inexplicably turns to powder.

The mysteries are solved by Barnabas Hildreth, a British Secret Service agent known as "The Black Monk." Hildreth appears to be well versed in some of the more obscure branches of science - for he is the one who finds the scientific answer to all these puzzles and more. There is one story in the collection which crosses the line into the supernatural, but most of them are grounded in science. I will admit to having found myself rereading some of the solutions to try to understand the explanations. Most of the stories were written in the 1930s, with a couple of exceptions.

I recommend highly one of the later Hildreth stories, called "The Monster." It deals with an apparently inexplicable situation: everyone knows the identity of a multiple murderer - yet they are powerless to stop him from killing or punish him or even arrest him. Why? Read the terrifying story to find out.

The collection, a volume in Crippen & Landru's marvelous "Lost Classics Series," is edited by Mike Ashley, who provides an excellent introduction that puts the Hildreth stories into the context of their author's work, for Cornier was a prolific storyteller. But the Hildreth stories are truly fascinating; Ellery Queen (who published many of the stories in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine," called them "One of the great series of mdern detective stories." It's hard to argue with him.

I have written more about "The Duel of Shadows" in the newest edition of the "I Love a Mystery Newsletter," edited by the redoubtable Sally Powers.

Comments

[Joshua]

I’ve read a few of Cornier’s stories, including “The Shot That Waited,” and I am definitely going to buy this book. His impossible crime stories that I’ve read have been quite grand, ambitious, and enjoyable.

[Les Blatt]

Agreed, Joshua. I assume "The Shot That Waited" is the story appearing in this collection as "The Duel of Shadows." All the stories strike me as original and fun.