Hilary Foulkes is a pretty detestable human being, so when he was stabbed nearly to death (after several other apparent attempts on his life), there was no shortage of potential suspects. There was, however, an overriding problem: the stabbing took place inside a locked and bolted room, with several witnesses just outside that locked door who could swear that nobody could possibly have gotten into or out of the room. As the doctors insisted it was impossible for the wound to be self-inflicted, and the victim insisted he hadn't seen his attacker, that turned it into quite a problem for Lieutenant Terence Marshall. Fortunately, Lt. Marshall had a friend who was good at that sort of problem - a nun, named Sister Ursula - who could help him uncover the truth about what had happened. The details may be found in Rocket to the Morgue, a classic American Golden Age mystery written in 1942 by Anthony Boucher. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete recording by clicking here.
Anthony Boucher, the author and critic for whom the annual Bouchercon world mystery conference is named, was equally at home in both the mystery and science fiction genres. One of the first things readers should know about Rocket to the Morgue is that the book is inhabited largely by thinly disguised versions of real life science fiction writers who were (mostly) Boucher's friends. Regular visitors to this site will know that locked rooms and impossible crimes are among my favorite types of crime fiction, and the solution to the "locked room" problem in this book is, I think, quite ingenious. It’s an amazingly good, funny and intelligent romp, using the mystery genre for a story about the people who wrote in the science fiction genre. If all this confuses you, just get a copy of Rocket to the Morgue, by Anthony Boucher, and prepare to be thoroughly entertained. The book, long out of print, has just been reprinted and reissued as part of publisher Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics series, and there's an introduction to this edition by F. Paul Wilson with more background on the book and its author.
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