Classic Mysteries

Looking Back: "Necklace and Calabash"

When I am asked which of Robert Van Gulik's mysteries featuring Judge Dee is my favorite, my answer is always the same: "Necklace and Calabash." First published in 1967, the year Van Gulik died, it is one of the best-developed stories in the series.

Looking back, I find that I did a podcast review of "Network and Calabash" just about five years ago, before I started the blog. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

The story begins with Judge Dee, the magistrate of Poo-Yang, stopping off in a small place called Rivertown, on his way home. He is hoping for a few quiet days of relaxation before he takes up his official duties again. But, of course, if that were to happen there would be no book, so he is quickly pressed into service, first by the military authorities who are in charge of Rivertown, and then by the Third Princess, the emperor's daughter who lives in her summer residence, the Water Palace, located just outside Rivertown. A valuable necklace has been stolen, and the theft appears to be connected to a large, malevolent plot, whose outline is only dimly visible. Judge Dee must also solve the gruesome murder of a young cashier at one of the Rivertown inns, as well as the mysterious disappearance of the innkeeper's wife.

There are wonderful characters in "Necklace and Calabash," including a Taoist monk, known as Master Gourd, who plays a major role in the mystery - even, at one point, saving Judge Dee's life. The Third Princess is also fascinating, and the various military officers and palace guards are memorable.

While the book does follow many of the traditions of the Chinese detective story, it is quite definitely "westernized" for the enjoyment of today's readers. The Judge Dee books, set in 7th Century Imperial China, were among the first "historical" mysteries. If you haven't met Judge Dee, "Necklace and Calabash" makes a perfect introduction.

Celebrating Chesterton

All right, it's probably a bit late to start baking a cake on his behalf, but today marks the 138th anniversary of the birth of G. K. Chesterton, born May 29, 1874. It is still an event worth celebrating, given Chesterton's lasting contributions to the field of detective fiction, particularly his authorship of the Father Brown short stories. Chesterton was also the model - physical as well as in character - for John Dickson Carr's detective, Dr. Gideon Fell.

May I suggest, as a way of celebrating, that you read (or re-read) some of the Father Brown stories? There were 52, originally collected into five volumes. If you want something a little more off the beaten path, you might enjoy The Man Who Was Thursday, a journey into the surreal (to put it mildly); I reviewed that one on this blog last fall. I have always enjoyed Chesterton's stories and I recommend them highly.

"The Lacquer Screen"

The sceen itself was a beautiful work of art, showing the four seasons and, at the same time, the progress of a man's relationship with a beloved woman. Only somebody modified the last panel of the screen so that it appeared to show the man stabbing the woman to death. Was the magistrate who owned the screen losing his mind? And did he, in fact, murder his wife?

That's the heart of the mystery Judge Dee must solve in seventh century China, in "The Lacquer Screen," by Robert Van Gulik. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

I have written before about the marvelous mysteries by Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat who became an ardent Orientalist, a connoisseur of Chinese history, art and literature. In 1949, he translated a Chinese detective story about Judge Dee, an actual historical figure who lived in seventh century China. He later went on to write sixteen novels of his own about Judge Dee, with a great deal of colorful background about life in ancient China.

In "The Lacquer Screen," published in 1962, Judge Dee, on his way home from a conference, stops in a neighboring district. He finds the magistrate of that district deeply distraught: his wife has disappeared. The magistrate confides his fears about his own sanity to Judge Dee, who reluctantly agrees to help solve the mystery. Dee quickly finds himself involved not only in the disappearance of the magistrate's wife but with another mysterious disappearance of a local businessman, who may have been the victim of a large-scale embezzlement as well.

As with all the Judge Dee mysteries, "The Lacquer Screen" is filled with memorable characters - wait until you meet "The Corporal," the boss of the local underground, when Judge Dee disguises himself as a petty thief to try to solve the puzzle. The Judge Dee books are a total delight - well plotted mysteries, set against the fascinating culture of Imperial China, a culture unfamiliar to many readers. "The Lacquer Screen" is a thoroughly entertaining book. It is available in print and also as an e-book for the Amazon Kindle.

The Wolfe is at the Door

For the fans of Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin living in the New York City area - ar visiting, for that matter - the Wolfe Pack has a couple of events coming up.

On Sunday, June 10, the group will be having brunch (at a tavern, of course), then heading for the New York Historical Society, which has an exhibit all about beer in New York City. Surely that will be an appropriate venue for Wolfean discussion!

If you missed the book discussion held at Slattery's Midtown Pub earlier this week, on "Plot It Yourself," the next one of those will be on Monday, September 24th, with "Too Many Clients" the subject of discussion and debate. If you have never attended one of these, you really should do so - pretty good pub food (and drinks), separate checks, and good conversation.

As always, you can get full details at The Wolfe Pack website. And, while you're there, sign up for membership - good grief, it's only $35 for two years and includes 4 issues of the otherwise-unavailable Gazette, filled with all things Wolfe-related.

Listening in a Locked Room

As an enthusiastic fan of locked room and impossible crime mysteries, I want to pass this along to others who are fascinated by these puzzles: the BBC this week released a half-hour radio program called "Miles Jupp in a Locked Room." It is a half-hour program about locked room mysteries, featuring comedian Miles Jupp interviewing a number of authors and scholars about the genre.

Jupp's guests include author and editor Mike Ashley, whose "The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries" is sitting on top of my TBR pile waiting to be read, and Robert Adey, another expert who has written extensively about locked room mysteries - and whose books, alas, are hard to find. There are also interviews with contemporary authors such as Paul Halter, the French author of first-rate locked room mysteries such as "The Fourth Door: The Houdini Murders," and with John Pugmire, who has translated several of Halter's books into English. There are a lot more - Paul Doherty, Denise Mina, Jasper Fforde, to name a few.

The BBC program is only available for listening through Sunday, May 27, so if you want to hear it, please click through and enjoy it now. It's well worth the half hour of your time.

Hat tip to John Pugmire and Monte Herridge for pointing this out to the Golden Age of Detection mail group on Yahoo.

"The Peacock Feather Murders"

If you were planning to murder someone...would you invite the police to come witness the crime? No, it's not a silly question. It happens - twice - in "The Peacock Feather Murders," by John Dickson Carr (writing as Carter Dickson). This 1937 doubly-impossible but fairly clued mystery is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

Here is the situation: two years before the start of this story, the police receive an odd message reading "There will be ten teacups at number 18, Pendragon Gardens, W. 8, on Monday, April 30 at 9:30 P.M.  The police are warned to keep an eye out." Was it a joke? Apparently not, for when police went to the house after the appointed hour, they found a man dead inside the only room provided with any furniture in the otherwise vacant house - and that furniture includes a big round table, set with ten empty teacups with a design on them like peacocks' feathers. The police investigation after the fact got nowhere and the case remained unsolved.

Now, the police have been sent another message with a very similar invitation. This time, they station police officers in the house across the street. And one officer even conceals himself inside the house mentioned in the peculiar invitation. That officer sees a man walk into a room across the hall from him, closing the only door to that room behind him. A couple of minutes later, the police hear two shots. The policeman inside the house runs into that room and finds the man who had entered it earlier has been shot to death - apparently shot in the back, at very close range. But nobody else is in the room. And there is no way anyone could have entered OR left that room by the only door (under police observation) or the windows (observed by the police across the street). And once again, in an otherwise empty house, there is a large round table in the murder room with ten teacups on it...

Like it so far? Fortunately, Carr's detective in this story is Sir Henry Merrivale, the Old Man, H. M., as he is known - irascible, with a deep appreciation for practical jokes and a well-deserved reputation for solving such "impossible" puzzles. And this one certainly seems impossible...doesn't it?

So there you have it. How was it done? By whom? And why were the police told to be on hand?

H. M. will find out. But you'll have to read "The Peacock Feather Murders" to get the answers. Fortunately, this Golden Age classic locked-room mystery, is back in print, from the Rue Morgue Press. If you enjoy matching wits over a good puzzle, try your hand at this one.

Who Goes There?

Any time I read a book or story which includes a scene set in a hedge maze, I tend to think back on the very grim examples of the maze species to be found in stories such as one of M. R. James's marvelous ghost stories, "Mr. Humphreys and his Inheritance." These are not the well-ordered (if sometimes challenging) mazes to be found on some English estates, such as the Hampton Court Maze. These are more the stuff of nightmare:

"It was a yew maze, of circular form, and the hedges, long untrimmed, had grown out and upwards to a most unorthodox breadth and height. The walks, too, were next door to impassable. Only by entirely disregarding scratches, nettle-stings, and wet, could Humphreys force his way along them..."

---

"he began to be sensible of some Creature keeping Pace with him and, as he thought, peering and looking upon him from the next Alley to that he was in; and that when he should stop, this Companion should stop also, which put him in some Disorder of his Spirits..."

Excerpts from "Mr. Humphreys and his Inheritance," written a century ago for Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Those are the ghosts which still come back to my memory when I read books like J. J. Connington's Murder in the Maze and Edmund Crispin's Sudden Vengeance, both of which feature nightmarish scenes set inside complex hedge mazes. I am generally not a horror story fan, but there is a place in my heart and on my bookshelves for M. R. James.

"Murder in the Maze"

This is the stuff of which nightmares are made. You are lost inside a maze - one of those garden affairs where the passageways are narrow lanes between very tall and very dense hedges. The idea is to find your way to the center of the maze, and then find your way out again. So here you are, exploring the maze - a maze with two centers - when you hear a cry. Someone has been murdered in the maze, and the killer is trying to get out. And you hear footsteps...

As I say, it's the stuff of nightmares. And it is one of several memorable scenes inside that frightening double maze in "Murder in the Maze," a marvelous 1927 mystery by J. J. Connington. Long out of print, it is once again available in a handsome paperback edition with a fine introduction by mystery scholar Curtis Evans. It is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

 "Murder in the Maze" begins at the country estate called Whistlefield, the home of Roger Shandon. Roger and his twin brother Neville, both needing a place where they can study their business affairs privately, go into the great double maze - a maze with two centers - that is Whistlefield's pride.

But both men are murdered in the maze, the victims of poisoned darts. Also in the maze at the time of the murder are two young visitors to the estate. They are the ones, exploring the maze separately, who hear the murders being committed - and who are terrified hearing the footsteps of the murderer trying to escape. What if that murderer comes across these potential witnesses, who are helplessly lost in the maze...

It's a nightmarish scene, remarkably well-realized. And there are other, equally well thought-out and created scenes within that maze which will linger in the memory long after you finish reading this book. The detective who solves the problems of the maze is Sir Clinton Driffield, the Chief Constable of the county where the crimes take place. Driffield and his friend Squire Wendover are Connington's series detectives, and the investigation is remarkably well done.

 I must admit I was completely unfamiliar with Connington until I read about him on Curtis Evans's fine blog, "The Passing Tramp." In his introduction to this new edition, Evans notes that "Murder in the Maze" drew praise from the great English poet T. S. Eliot, who called it "a really first-rate detective story." I suspect that modern readers will agree with Eliot's assessment; Evans calls it "one of the very finest country house mysteries produced by a British detective novelist in the 1920s." It is highly recommended.

Where to Begin with Appleby

In my review this week of Appleby's Answer, by Michael Innes, I note that it is probably not the best choice for a reader unfamiliar with the series of novels about Sir John Appleby. Between 1936 and 1986, Appleby appeared in 32 novels and more than twice that number of short stories by Innes.

The novels generally share certain qualities. They are traditional mysteries, with clues to be followed and considered, although Innes sometimes conceals them from the reader until nearly the end of the book. They are all written with a good deal of sophisticated humor. Perhaps reflecting Innes's real life as a professor of English literature, the books do have (and occasionally suffer from) a surfeit of literary quotations - some of which even I, as an old English major, find hopelessly obscure. But I find that this adds to the overall atmosphere of the books, rather than detracting from them.

Innes's plots can also be fairly bizarre. Some of the stories really border on surrealism, though Innes does manage to make them intriguing, if the reader is willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good mystery.

The question, then, is where to begin with Appleby and Innes - where to find a book with as little distraction and as much pleasure as possible.

I invariably recommend my own personal favorite, Lament for a Maker. It was the third outing for Appleby, written near the end of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, in 1938. It is written after the fashion of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone - the story is told by a series of narrators, each of whom picks up the plot and unravels some of the tangled mystery. Set in the Scottish Highlands, it features a mad and malevolent Scottish laird, a miser, who wanders through the halls of his decrepit and unheated castle with a candle, reciting the eerie words of the medieval poet William Dunbar's "Lament for the Makers." The story features an apparently impossible murder, a memorable setting, and marvelous characters and, I think, it contains some of Innes's finest writing.

If you would rather read some of the Appleby short stories, there is a fine collection published by Crippen & Landru called Appleby Talks About Crime with 18 previously uncollected (in book form) Innes short stories. You will get a good taste for Appleby and Innes in these stories.

Beyond that, check the backlist page of this blog for earlier reviews of Innes books - including some which do not feature Appleby at all. There are many more waiting on my to-be-read (or really to-be-reread) shelf, so I'd better get to work.

"Appleby's Answer"

Certainly there is nothing unusual about a mystery writer getting into a conversation with a stranger who is reading one of her novels - even if the reader clearly is not happy with what he is reading. It becomes a good deal more unusual, though, when that stranger tries to hire the writer to come up with a plot for a murder mystery - a plot which that stranger may be intending to put into action against a neighbor. That raises all sorts of questions. Fortunately for author Priscilla Pringle, there is "Appleby's Answer," by Michael Innes. It is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to it by clicking here.

"Appleby's Answer" is another in the long series of mysteries by Michael Innes featuring John Appleby - now retired as Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. He finds himself pressed into service in the investigation of what may be a significant criminal plot - or perhaps something even more sinister. Certainly that chance reader encountered by Priscilla Pringle, a man named Captain Bulkington who appears to run a tutoring establishment for the rather slow-witted sons of the very rich, appears to be up to some kind of mischief - but what, exactly is going on? Is he planning the murder of a neighbor? There will be a fair number of surprising twists and turns in the story before it is resolved with Appleby's ultimate answer (not to mention a rather malevolent goat).

This book dates from 1973, which makes it one of the later entries in the Appleby canon. While it's enjoyable, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is new to Appleby and to Innes - there are better books to introduce you to the author and his characters. But if you're already an Appleby fan, as are most who encounter his books, you'll find this an enjoyable romp with some wicked satire about mystery writers in general. For e-book readers, it is available as an e-book for the Amazon Kindle.