Classic Mysteries

From the Vault: "The Greek Coffin Mystery"

When I discuss the mysteries of Ellery Queen with friends, we often find ourselves arguing over which of the many Queen stories we prefer - and why. Personally, I have always preferred the earliest Queen novels written during the first few years of Queen's career over the later, more realistic, somewhat gloomier, and more character-driven mysteries. Looking back through my reviews of Queen books, I believe my review from several years ago of one of the best of those early mysteries, The Greek Coffin Mystery, may help to explain my feelings - and, at the same time, may persuade you to read that particular novel. The audio review was done several years ago for the Classic Mysteries podcast; here, lightly edited, is the transcript of that review:

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The story begins with the death of an established and respected art dealer in New York City. The dealer, Georg Khalkis, was duly buried in a private cemetery immediately behind his home. No sooner was the funeral over, however, than his lawyer discovered that Georg Khalkis’s will had disappeared – apparently stolen, immediately before the funeral. When nobody could find the will, they called the police. And Inspector Queen’s son, Ellery Queen, pointed out that – logically - there was only one place that the will could be – and that was in the coffin with Georg Khalkis. So they decided to open the grave. They didn’t find the will there. But what they did find shocked everyone most profoundly – as we’ll see in The Greek Coffin Mystery, by Ellery Queen.

It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance of Ellery Queen in the history of traditional American detective fiction. For those new to Ellery Queen, let’s begin by defining him. “Ellery Queen” was the pseudonym used by two cousins, Fred Dannay and Manfred Lee, when writing their mysteries which featured “Ellery Queen” – the character. The fictional Queen was the son of a senior New York City police detective, Inspector Richard Queen.

Ellery Queen first appeared in The Roman Hat Mystery in 1929; his last book was A Fine and Private Place in 1971. In my opinion, the books do vary widely in quality and in focus. Personally, my favorites are the early books – the first nine Ellery Queen novels, which are all titled the same way – "the (nationality) (noun) mystery." These are pure puzzle mysteries – in fact, I’d have to say that might be a weakness, for in the earlier books in particular the puzzle is all-important – the characters generally less so.

That is certainly true of The Greek Coffin Mystery, the fourth book in the series, originally published in 1932. As a fair-play puzzle, in which the clues are all presented to the reader, it is among Queen’s best. But the reader will have to be willing to pay very close attention to detail in order to follow the action.

The Greek Coffin Mystery has no fewer than four solutions, presented sequentially. Obviously it is the final solution which will prove to be the correct one. The others, offered earlier at critical points in the story, appear to solve the mystery – as it is known up to that point – but they are then exploded by further developments in the case.

I really don’t want to say very much about the plot or those developments – it really would be very difficult to do without providing spoilers as well. Suffice to say that there are a couple of murders, there’s that missing will, there are references to a couple of potentially valuable paintings which might or might not be missing. There’s also the book’s setting amid the upper-class art world of New York City in the 1920s.

And there is Ellery Queen – the fictional Ellery Queen, the detective. It is worth noting that the reader is told that the events in “The Greek Coffin Mystery” supposedly take place before those chronicled in the first four published mysteries. This, we are told, is why Ellery Queen appears so brash and so, well, insufferable, particularly in the first half of the book. It is only after his very clever, brilliantly reasoned first solution to the mystery is blown out from under him that Ellery realizes he is fallible and begins to develop some humility.

When I call him "insufferable," I tend to think of comparisons with other insufferable American detectives of the period – S.S. Van Dine's Philo Vance, in particular. There is a lot of Philo Vance in the character of Ellery Queen, including many irritants such as a heavy reliance on obscure quotations from the classics. The later Ellery Queen books tended to humanize the detective’s character, emphasizing his fallibility and reducing his reliance on quotations and those rather affected glasses without earpieces, or pince-nez glasses.

So what we are left with, then, is a most complex puzzle to be solved by Ellery Queen. But in this book, as in the other early Queen novels, we are also given a formal challenge to the reader. Immediately before the final few chapters, we are directly challenged by Ellery Queen:

“Ungentle reader, you now have in your possession all the facts pertinent to the only correct solution of the…problem."

So will you accept the challenge? The clues are there. The characters are interesting enough to make us care. The peeling away of the final layers is, I think, very likely to provide quite a surprise when the guilty individual is revealed – but an honest appraisal leaves us feeling that we have not been cheated, that we should have been able to spot that individual earlier in the book. I know that I failed to do so…and I suspect you will too.

So there you are. As puzzle mysteries go, The Greek Coffin Mystery is one of the absolute best – as long as you can accept the rather sophomoric behavior and attitudes of Ellery Queen the detective in order to enjoy the cleverness of Ellery Queen the author. There are a couple of cringe-worthy racial references – this was first published in 1932, remember – but they strike me as pretty minor. Oh, and one thing more: there are 34 chapters in this book, each having a single word as its title. When you put together the first letters of those 34 chapter titles as an acrostic, they form the words “The Greek Coffin Mystery by Ellery Queen.” If you enjoy puzzles like that, you should certainly enjoy this book.

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You can listen to the original audio review by clicking here.

Next: Murder Must Wait, by Arthur W. Upfield.

"The Adventures of Dagobert Trostler"

Ellery Queen  reportedly called him “The first important Teutonic sleuth.” In the early years of the 20th Century, he was known in German-speaking countries as "The Viennese Sherlock Holmes." His name is Dagobert Trostler, the creation of an Austrian writer and journalist named Adalbert Goldscheider, who wrote under the name of Balduin Groller. Those stories in their original language were collected into half a dozen small volumes between 1910 and 1912, but – for whatever reason – they were never translated for the English language market. 

A couple of years ago, a small publishing house, Kazabo Books, brought out a short volume containing English language translations of six of the original stories about Dagobert Trostler. The book is called The Adventures of Dagobert Trostler, Vienna’s Sherlock Holmes. The book also contains an excellent (and uncredited) foreword with information about Dagobert Trostler and his creator, Balduin Groller. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and the publisher has sent me an e-book copy for this review. You can listen to the review by clicking here. [LINK FIXED - was broken before. Sorry!] The review will provide you with a rundown on the individual stories to be found in the book.

The short stories in this collection of The Adventures of Dagobert Trostler are not about murders; rather, they are about non-violent but serious crimes, such as blackmail and theft. The stories are quite entertaining, and I do hope that the publisher might be able to find more of the Dagobert stories available for translation. The book provides a good taste of the mysteries involved and more than a hint of the way life was lived by the Viennese upper classes at the turn of the 20^th century in the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian empire leading up to the First World War. The book is The Adventures of Dagobert Trostler, by Balduin Groller, and I think you’d enjoy it. It's currently available both as a paperback and in e-book editions.

 

Feom the Vault: "The Girl in the Cellar"

The name of Patricia Wentworth isn't nearly as well known or as often discussed by classic mystery readers as, say, Agatha Christie. Perhaps it should be. Wentworth wrote dozens of fine mysteries. More than 30 of them featured Miss Maud Silver, a retired governess who became a remarkably talented private "enquiry agent." She could fade into the background of a room, doing her knitting - and listening to conversations among suspects in any number of crimes. She's very much like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in that regard, and it's a grave mistake to underestimate her. One of my favorite Miss Silver books is The Girl in the Cellar, Wentworth's last book and one of her best, published in 1961, the year the author passed away. I did an audio review for the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago. Here's a transcript of that review - and, as always, there has been some minor editing involved:

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It must be a terrifying sensation not to know who you are. All the young woman knew was that she was standing, apparently on a stone step. She had no idea of her name, or how she got there, or where she was. All that she knew – somehow – was that there was the body of a dead girl at the foot of the stairway where she stood. And when she panicked and ran out of the house…she had the very good fortune to run into Miss Maud Silver – who believed her rather incredible story and agreed to help her. It happens in The Girl in the Cellar, the last book Patricia Wentworth ever wrote about Miss Silver.

Patricia Wentworth had a long and distinguished writing career, over the course of nearly half a century. While she wrote more than sixty mysteries in all, she is certainly best remembered for the 32 books featuring Miss Maud Silver, a former governess, who began a career as a private enquiry agent after her retirement, with remarkable success.

Wentworth’s books certainly fit into the niche of crime stories that today we call “cozies” – the violence is generally well off stage; there is usually a Young Damsel in Distress, there will be an Enigmatic Young Man who may (or may not) really be in love (or fall in love) with that distressed damsel; there will be People Who Should Know Better who manage to put the hero and heroine in considerable jeopardy – and there is always Miss Silver, often sitting quietly in a corner of the room, seemingly absorbed in her knitting, to identify the guilty and ease the romantic paths for both the Damsel and the Young Man.

But if Wentworth’s books tend to follow a pattern, she is quite adept at coming up with variations on the theme, introducing interesting and sympathetic characters. And in this last of her Miss Silver books, The Girl in the Cellar, published in 1961, Wentworth starts off remarkably well by taking us inside the mind of a terrified young woman. Listen to this first paragraph, which I think is really amazing:

She looked into the dead unbroken dark and had neither memory nor thought. She was not conscious of where she was, or of how she had come there. She was not conscious of anything except the darkness. She did not know if time had passed. There seemed to be no sense that it went by, but it must have done, because the moment when she knew nothing except the darkness had changed into a moment in which she knew that her feet were on stone, and that she must not move from where she stood.

I think that passage conveys very well some of the sense of nightmare in which this young woman suddenly finds herself trapped. Not even knowing her own name, she only knows – somehow – that there is a dead body at the foot of the stairway on which she is standing. And when she manages to find a flashlight in her bag – for she does find that bag at her feet – and descends the stairs, she does indeed find the body of an unknown young woman, who has been shot.

And so our memory-less young woman runs from the house…and gets on the first bus to pass by…and that’s where her luck begins to turn, for she meets Miss Silver, who is struck by the young woman’s look of utter desolation and shock and who takes her under her wing.

And we are off, trying to determine who this young woman is – and who is the girl in the cellar? Along the way, the young woman will – eventually – find out who she is, what she was doing in that house, and the identity of the dead girl. And that knowledge can be a dangerous thing indeed.

It’s all handled quite deftly. And if the clues aren’t exactly thick on the ground, with Miss Silver staying largely in the background, and there’s too much reliance on coincidence to both solve the case and to rescue the heroine – well, perhaps I’m being unfair. I’ve read several of the Miss Silver books, and I have to say that I genuinely consider this one to be among the best I’ve read. It’s good to find The Girl in the Cellar is still available in paperback as well as e-book and audiobook editions. If you’re new to Maud Silver, this will make a fine introduction.

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You can listen to the complete audio review by clicking here.

Next: The Greek Coffin Mystery, by Ellery Queen.

We're a Little Late, Folks...

Apologies, but my regular posting routine will be a bit delayed over the next couple of weeks. It's the confluence of Jewish holidays, mixed with some medical issues (NOT COVID related, thank you). I hope to be back on schedule in the next couple of days, so please do keep checking back. Thank you for your understanding.

"Poets and Murder"

The poetess selected a writing brush and found a smooth space on one of the building's pillars. She wrote:

Bitterly I search for the right words,

   For this poem, written under my lamp.

I cannot sleep the long night,

   Fearing the lonely coverlets.

In the garden outside

   Is the soft rustling of the autumn leaves.

The moon shines forlornly

   Through the gauze window panes.

The poetess Yoo-lan wrote those lines during the course of a party celebrating Autumn in one of Robert Van Gulik's marvelous historical mysteries about Judge Dee, a district magistrate and (eventually) senior government official in T'ang dynasty China. At the time, Yoo-lan was a prisoner, although one given great privileges. She was being transported to the ancient capital of China, nearly 15 centuries ago, where she would be put on trial to determine whether she was guilty of murdering a servant girl. Her poem will play a significant part in the mystery you'll find in Robert Van Gulik's final book about Judge Dee. The book is called Poets and Murder, first published in 1968, the year after its author's death, and it is the subject of my audio review today on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You are invited to listen to the complete podcast by clicking here.

Judge Dee was, in fact, a real Chinese official in the T’ang dynasty, known and revered in Chinese literature and history as a brilliant detective and statesman. He lived between the years  630 and 700. In the 20^th century, a Dutch diplomat and Orientalist, Robert Van Gulik, wrote a series of historical mysteries with Judge Dee as the protagonist. 

Poets and Murder is set in the fictional district of Chin-hwa, where Magistrate Lo is planning a celebration in honor of the Mid-Autumn Festival. He has invited several distinguished poets and scholars to stay with him for the celebration as his guests. Also invited: his colleague and friend, Judge Dee, the magistrate of the neighboring district of Poo-yang. But even as the two magistrates discuss Lo’s plans for the event, they are interrupted by news of a murder in the town: a young man, a student named Soong, has been found with his throat slashed. Magistrate Lo is distraught – an amateur poet himself, he has been looking forward to sharing his poems with the distinguished guests. His primary duty, however, must be to investigate this murder. Judge Dee volunteers to help him collect facts about the crime. And so we follow Judge Dee as he asks questions, and uncovers facts about additional murders, while juggling the exact and unbending social protocols involved with acting as host to such distinguished guests – one or more of whom may be a murderer.

That’s only a bare outline of the plot, which is definitely on the dark side. As always, a great deal of enjoyment will be found in the depiction of the way of life in seventh century China,  as seen through Judge Dee’s eyes.  Robert Van Gulik was extremely knowledgeable about the social history of dynastic China, and there is a great deal to be learned and enjoyed in his telling of this story of Poets and Murder. I recommend it to you.

From the Vault: "Gambit"

Along with many of my visitors to this blog, I admire and enjoy all of Rex Stout's books about Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I am particularly fond of Gambit, one of only two Nero Wolfe adventures* to have a single word as its title. But that word is really singularly appropriate, for it works in several different ways in the course of the story - including the gambit used by Wolfe to resolve the plot. I did an audio review of Gambit for the Classic Mysteries podcast several years back, and I hope it will convince you that you really would enjoy reading the book. Here's a transcript - as usual, slightly edited. And what is a gambit, you ask? Read on!

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In the world of chess, the word “gambit” refers to the opening move by a player in which a pawn or other chess piece is sacrificed to gain a strategic advantage. It is an interesting concept – particularly when it becomes the central image in a mystery featuring chess, chocolate, poison – and one of the world’s great detectives, Nero Wolfe. Gambit is the title of one of Rex Stout’s mysteries featuring Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin.

Gambit, originally published in 1962, may not be Rex Stout’s most ingenious book, but it certainly has one of the best opening scenes of any story featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. And, for that matter, it also has one of the best office confrontations – what Archie calls “one of the best charades Wolfe has ever staged.”

Let’s begin with that marvelous opening scene: Nero Wolfe is seated in front of the fire in the front room of his house on 35^th street in New York City, tearing pages out of the new, third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary, Unabridged – and feeding them to the fire. As a lover of the English language, Wolfe cannot stand what he sees as the heresies of the new dictionary. Among other things, it encourages the use of the words “imply” and “infer” interchangeably. If this seems petty to you, well remember that Wolfe is a genius, and presumably must be allowed some leeway in defining acceptable behavior, especially in his own home. I don’t know if that conclusion is inferred or implied. But that image, of Wolfe sitting in front of the fire, feeding the offending dictionary to the flames, page by page, is – to me, at any rate - one of the most memorable opening scenes in any of the Nero Wolfe books.

This touching scene of domestic tranquility – well, I don’t know what else to call it – is broken with the arrival of a would-be client. Sally Blount has a problem: her father has been arrested for murder, with all the evidence seemingly weighted against him. Matthew Blount is accused of murdering Paul Jerin, a genius at chess, who was playing a dozen games of chess simultaneously with a dozen different opponents when he was poisoned. Seems that Matthew Blount gave Jerin the poisoned hot chocolate…and took the chocolate away afterwards and washed out the cup as well. The police think they have an open and shut case. Blount’s daughter Sally wants Wolfe and Goodwin to investigate and find a way to clear her father – despite the fact that neither her father nor his lawyer wants Wolfe to be hired.

And we’re off and running on a case which provides Wolfe with remarkably few clues. Archie wisecracks his way through the narration, as usual, with lots of wonderful lines. Wolfe gathers some significant clues – including one from Inspector Cramer who, as usual, doesn’t see the significance of his own information. There is another murder. And, in the end, even when Wolfe and Archie know the identity of the killer…they realize they haven’t a shred of evidence.

And that’s when Wolfe sets up that wonderful charade, as Archie calls it. As usual, he calls all the suspects together in his office and…

Ah, but that would be telling. You’ll have to read it yourself to find out what happens – and why.

Gambit can be a little frustrating because there are so few clues to work with. One result of that, however, is that when Wolfe and Goodwin get the information they need to identify the killer, the astute reader ought to be able to follow their logic and reach the same conclusion. But Gambit is much more about relationships – between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, between Wolfe and Inspector Cramer, between Sally Blount and her parents. In the end, Gambit is a very satisfying mystery.

Oh, by the way, both Webster’s Third International Dictionary – the one Wolfe found so offensive – and the earlier, Second Edition are both still available. Speaking as an old English major, I’d have to say – Wolfe was right. Go with the second edition.

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*The other single-word title is Fer-de-Lance. If there are others I've missed, I'm sure I'll hear about it from someone!

You can listen to the complete audio version of this review by clicking here.

Next: The Girl in the Cellar, by Patricia Wentworth.

Cécile Is Dead

Inspector Maigret knew who she was, of course. Her name was Cécile. Several times in recent days, she had shown up at the headquarters of the Parisian Police, sitting in the room the police called "The Aquarium" because of the glass wall which let them see who was waiting to speak to them. She wanted to speak to Maigret, to tell him of strange things happening in the apartment she shared with her aunt. This day, Maigret had seen Cécile come in, but, as he came through, she had sent a message to Maigret that said, “You simply must see me. A terrible thing happened last night.” But Maigret, in the course of a busy day, lost track of Cécile – until she disappeared from the Aquarium. And when Maigret, now worried about her, want to her apartment to see what he could find – well, by then it was too late, for Cécile was dead. And so begins a harrowing chase for Maigret in Cécile Is Dead a 1942 novel by Georges Simenon featuring Detective Chief Inspector Maigret. It is the subject of the audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Not only is Cécile dead, she was murdered – strangled, right inside police headquarters, her body left in a closet just down the hall from that police waiting room known as The Aquarium. But by whom? And why? In her apartment, Maigret finds the body of Cécile's Aunt Juliet. Was this the “terrible thing” that Cécile tried to report to Maigret on that last morning of her life? 

As usual in a Maigret mystery, the emphasis is on the characters we meet in the course of the novel, for there are a great many potential suspects.Many – perhaps most – of Simenon’s Maigret novels rely much more heavily on mood and character than they do on clever plotting. But Cécile is Dead is unusually well plotted, with a number of clever twists (and a solution which literally comes in the final words of the book). Whether you enjoy the clever plotting or the memorable characters I think you’ll find a great deal to like in Cécile is Dead.

From the Vault: "Diabolic Candelabra

If you're looking for something unusual in your Golden Age mysteries, let me recommend the works of E. R. Punshon to you. So far, I've read and reviewed ten of Punshon's books, all featuring Detective Bobby Owen, and I've thoroughly enjoyed them all. So for this week's featured review from the Classic Mysteries vault, I'm offering a transcript of my audio review of Punshon's 1942 novel Diabolic Candelabra, and if you think that a diabolic candelabra sounds a bit strange - well, yes. As you'll see. Anyway, here's the transcript, slightly edited as usual:

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Let’s talk about the odds and ends of a mystery – mostly the odds, really. The most police inspector Bobby Owen could say about the odd events going on in and around the English village of Barsley Forest was just that – they were odd events. There was the search for a unique and quite popular secret recipe for chocolate candies. There was the disappearance of an elusive hermit who lived somewhere in the forest. There was the equally mysterious – and troubling – disappearance of the hermit’s axe. There was the matter of the young woman who locked her abusive stepfather in the cellar with nothing but bread and water. And the young child who thought nothing of spending days and nights out in the forest with a wild squirrel as her only companion, rarely returning to her home. Then there was another disappearance. And somehow all of these things might…or might not…have anything to do with rumors about a couple of missing paintings by El Greco – paintings that could be worth a great deal of money to somebody. Oh, and then there was another rumor about missing art work – a candelabra made of purest silver by the great Italian master, Benvenuto Cellini, a candelabra designed with the hideous faces of demons from hell – in fact, you might call it, a Diabolic Candelabra…which is the name of the book we’ll be discussing today.

E.R. Punshon’s book, Diabolic Candelabra, was first published in 1942, with World War II under way, when England was undergoing regular bombardment by German planes. The hardships of that war, and the blackouts made necessary by the air raids, form a background for Punshon’s book, although they do not really play a major part in the story.

Diabolic Candelabra begins with a search for a new recipe for making chocolate candies. Inspector Bobby Owen’s wife, Olive, has been asked by a friend to try to find the person who makes these unusual chocolates, a young woman who lives in a house in the nearby forest, to see if she would be willing to make a great many more of those candies for sale at the local church bazaar.

So Olive and her husband set out for the forest – rather like Hansel and Gretel, I suppose. And what they encounter could come right out of one of the more unpleasant fairy tales: a whole collection of singular events, including the disappearance of that very reclusive hermit and his axe. Then, there’s another disappearance, this time the case of a local businessman who is also involved in the sale of those chocolates – although there’s no real indication that that recipe has anything to do with the case.

And there are more odd turns: the bloodstain on the floor of the hermit’s shack; the strange little girl, named Loo, the younger sister of the woman who makes the candies, a child far more at home in the forest, talking to the animals, than she is in her home with her mother and sister. Oh, and of course her evil stepfather, who is, however, terrified that his older stepdaughter will – again – lock him in the cellar and refuse to let him out. And don’t forget the local squire and his family – on the verge of rather genteel poverty they may be looking for what may have been family heirlooms: some paintings by the great El Greco and that very peculiar and rather horrifying candelabra said to have been made by Cellini.

Getting confused? Then be reassured: Punshon manages to juggle several different and apparently unrelated story lines here and build them into a complex but entirely coherent whole. The reader is given a number of clues – though their significance may not be immediately apparent. The characters are quite memorable – I am particularly fond of Loo, the little girl who seems to be able to talk to animals. There are also some fine thriller elements, including a climactic struggle in a mysterious cave. The writing is tight and witty. Let me give you an example of what I mean: Bobby Owen is interviewing a traveling salesman named Weston – who deals in ladies’ corsets, which, he says, is a dying trade. Mr. Weston speaks first:

“If things go on the way they are, in fifty years women will be wearing nothing at all.”

“Too bad,” said Bobby.

“Except,” conceded Mr. Weston, “slacks and a permanent wave.”

“Oh well,” said Bobby a trifle shaken by such a prospect.

“You can’t trust women,” pronounced Mr. Weston as one who knew. “I had a pal whose family did well once on hatpins. Where are they now?”

Bobby wasn’t sure whether this referred to the pal’s family or the hatpins. As in neither case did he know the answer, he said nothing.”

I think that gives you a little of the flavor of the dialogue and the characters in E. R. Punshon’s Diabolic Candelabra. Punshon was quite prolific, writing nearly three dozen books about Inspector Bobby Owen, but his work remains virtually unknown in the United States. I think you’d enjoy meeting Bobby Owen and his creator, E. R. Punshon – and this is a fine place to start.

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You can listen to the original audio version of this review by clicking here.

Next: Gambit, by Rex Stout.