Classic Mysteries

From the Vault: "Hercule Poirot's Christmas"

Given the approach of the Christmas season, I've been making a list and checking it twice, trying to find a suggestion for a gift that you might enjoy, whatever holiday you prefer. Back in the prime of Agatha Christie's career, her publisher used to advertise, with some pride, the availability each year of "a Christie for Christmas." So for my gift to you, let me reprint a couple of my reviews of two of Dame Agatha's mysteries - one each for Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. We'll begin today with Hercule Poirot's Christmas. Since I first wrote this review a decade ago, the book's title has undergone some changes - when I reviewed it, it was better known as Murder for Christmas, but the title under which it is currently being sold is Hercule Poirot's Christmas, and the text of my review, below, has been updated to correct the title wherever it appears. In any case, Merry and Happy to all:

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Well here we are at the Christmas season – traditionally a time of good will. Let’s see, what do we have in the library that will add to our holiday cheer? How about the warmth of an English Christmas house party, in the late 1930s? Plenty of relatives on hand. A blazing fire. Good port wine. A couple of mysterious strangers. Oh yes – and a murder, with lots of blood. Everything Hercule Poirot needs for a satisfying holiday in Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie.

A good place to begin our discussion of the book  is with her dedication. Most of Christie’s novels might belong in the broad category of books that we would define as “cozies” – that is, the violence is usually discreet and well off-stage. Not so with Hercule Poirot's Christmas – and, in fact, that’s perhaps the most noteworthy feature about the murder in this book. When it was published in 1938, Christie dedicated it to her brother-in-law. She wrote:

“You complained that my murders were getting too refined – anaemic, in fact! You yearned for a ‘good violent murder with lots of blood.’ A murder where there was no doubt about its being murder! So this is your special story – written for you. I hope it may please.”

Beyond pointing out that Agatha Christie’s words should rarely be taken at their face value, I will say only that this particular murder is quite violent indeed. It is that wonderful, clichéd, setting, the English country house party. Old Simeon Lee, a very rich, but particularly unpleasant and tyrannical man, has invited his family to a reunion at the family home. His aim, apparently, is to stir up as much animosity among his sons as possible – and, to that end, he has also invited his black-sheep son to return home, as well as a Spanish granddaughter, largely unknown to the other family members. In addition, a stranger turns up at the house and introduces himself as the son of Simeon’s old business partner in South Africa.

It’s a volatile mix, and Simeon knows which buttons to push to get everyone at everyone else’s throat. So it’s not a huge surprise when he is murdered – rather spectacularly. Everyone hears what sounds like a huge fight inside his locked study, followed by a terrible scream. When they break down the study door, they find Simeon with his throat cut, blood everywhere – lots of blood – and nobody else in the room. That’s right, a locked room impossible crime, much to the dismay of the police. Oh, and I almost forgot – thousands of dollars worth of uncut diamonds seem to have disappeared from a safe in the study.

Fortunately, Hercule Poirot, who has been visiting the local chief constable, is on hand to help the police sort everything out.

In terms of plot, this has to be one of Christie’s absolute best. She takes the clichés of the situation and turns them upside down, using them to lure readers into a number of traps along the way – traps which, of course, Poirot is able to avoid. The reader is likely to suspect one person, then another, and another, as secrets are uncovered and revealed. Even after Poirot explains how and why the locked room puzzle was worked, the reader is still unprepared for the ultimate revelation of the murderer. But the clues are there – and have been given to us quite fairly along the way. It’s a dazzling performance.

So, at this season of good will, if you’re in the mood for an impossible murder, let me recommend – strongly – Hercule Poirot's Christmas. I should note that it has also been published as Murder for Christmas, and it has also been published as “A Holiday for Murder,” but I think that currently it’s most easily found in the United States as Hercule Poirot's Christmas. It’s in print, and should be readily available. Savor it over the holiday.

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If you'd like to listen to the original audio version of the review, please click here.

Next week, we'll be joined by Miss Marple as she tackles tne problem of Murder at the Vicarage.

From the Vault: "Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries"

I suspect that there may be a goodly number of fans who read short crime stories by American authors who are not yet acquainted with Uncle Abner. This character, created by Melville Davisson Post, appears in 18 short stories, first published more than a century ago, in 1918. But these short stories are uniquely powerful, powerful in the stories they tell, powerful in the writing. And if the stories sometimes reflect the realities and prejudices of American frontier society (and they do), Uncle Abner is generally to be found on the side of the angels. I reviewed the collection of Uncle Abner stories, called Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries, several years ago, in an audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. Here's a transcript, somewhat edited, of that review:

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Among the many wonderful characters who appear in American detective stories, one of the most memorable among them is a man known as Uncle Abner. In a series of stories set along the American frontier in the mountainous regions of western Virginia – the area which later became West Virginia – Uncle Abner represents the voice of morality in a rugged nation that sometimes had difficulty determining good from evil. Uncle Abner was the creation of Melville Davisson Post – and his 1918 collection is called Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries.

The back-cover blurb to my own copy of the book nails these stories pretty well, I think, saying,

“If you look at any critical list of the ten most important books of detective stories published in the United States, the chances are great that you will find in it Uncle Abner.

Let me tell you a little more about the character of Uncle Abner. The stories are seen through the eyes of his nephew, Martin, who tells us this about his uncle:

He was one of those austere, deeply religious men who were the product of the Reformation. He always carried a Bible in his pocket and he read it where he pleased. Once the crowd at Roy’s Tavern tried to make sport of him when he got his book out by the fire; but they never tried it again. When the fight was over Abner paid Roy eighteen silver dollars for the broken chairs and the table – and he was the only man in the tavern who could ride a horse. Abner belonged to the church militant, and his God was a war lord.

I think that pretty well sums up Uncle Abner and his outlook on the world. In these eighteen short stories, Uncle Abner represents the moral power of good which has been lost by some of the others in the stories. Most of these stories about crime – mostly murder – are not really “fair-play” stories. Instead, we observe Abner as he talks to people and examines facts and frequently reveals a crime where none had been suspected – and solves it as well.

Some of the stories ARE closer to the conventions of the detective story.  The first story in the book, called “The Doomdorf Mystery,” is a marvelous locked-room puzzle: a man is shot to death inside a locked room. Two people confess to the murder, but it becomes clear on talking to them that neither could have done it and escaped from that locked room. It is Uncle Abner whose observations will explain the seemingly impossible crime.

Uncle Abner is not always concerned with the letter of the law. He is more concerned with what, to him, is divinely inspired justice. And by his focus on that, prompted by his own deeply religious beliefs, he acts as a champion of the wrongfully accused and explains mysteries as he uncovers them.

There are so many gems among the eighteen stories here that it is impossible to do them all justice. There is “Naboth’s Vineyard,” in which – again – two people confess to a murder, but Uncle Abner finds a deeper truth. In “The Concealed Path,” he delays a forced wedding long enough to uncover a grisly crime. In “A Twilight Adventure” he manages to stop the lynching of a couple of suspected cattle thieves. In all the stories, it is Uncle Abner’s vision, guided by his beliefs, that smooth some of the edges of rough frontier justice.

I should insert a short warning here to the politically correct: the stories were published in 1918, and they are set in a time and place where slavery was practiced. What we now politely refer to as the “n” word comes up occasionally – particularly in one story, “The Devil’s Tools,” where it is used frequently by a Black servant referring to others. If that sort of thing makes the entire book unpalatable to you – well, it’s your choice.

Personally, I think the stories in Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries, by Melville Davisson Post, are remarkable examples of the storyteller’s art. Uncle Abner is a unique character, brilliantly drawn, standing out in the rough frontier atmosphere of these stories. Once again, let me quote the narrator, young Martin:

“for all his iron ways, Abner was a man who saw justice in its large and human aspect, and he stood for the spirit, above the letter, of the truth.”

I see that, on Amazon.com, one reader writes, in a review of the book,

“If you are a fan of mystery stories and you have not read Uncle Abner, your education is incomplete.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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

Next: Murder for Christmas, by Agatha Christie.

From the Vault: "Death from a Top Hat"

Publisher/author/Mysterious Bookshop maven Otto Penzler's line of American Mystery Classics has been re-printing a growing number of fine classic crime stories over the past year or so. A check back into the Classic Mysteries vault has yielded another excellent example, long out-of-print but now available again: Death from a Top Hat, a 1938 "impossible crime" novel, featuring Clayton Rawson's primary puzzle-solver, The Great Merlini. Here's what I said about it in my audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago - updated with the latest information about the book's availability:

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Look closely at any mystery which has a so-called “impossible crime” at its heart…a murder inside a locked room, for example…and you will almost certainly come up against what is essentially a stage magic trick: someone, usually the murderer – and, of course, the author – finds a way to manipulate what you see in order to create an illusion. This kind of misdirection is a staple of stage magic – in fact, in many ways, it is at the heart of virtually every stage magician’s act. So imagine, if you will, a couple of murders in which not only the victims but most of the suspects, too, are almost all stage magicians. Think it could cause a headache? We’ll find out as we examine Death from a Top Hat, by Clayton Rawson.

By all rights, Clayton Rawson’s name should be much more familiar than it is to today’s mystery readers. A writer, editor and a first-rate amateur magician, Rawson was one of the four founding authors who created the Mystery Writers of America, the professional organization responsible for the annual Edgar awards. Rawson’s four novels date from the late 1930s and early 1940s and feature, as their primary detective, The Great Merlini, a stage magician who owns and runs a store that provides equipment and tricks to other magicians. In the first Merlini novel, Death From a Top Hat, Merlini is called in to help Inspector Homer Gavigan, of the New York City police department. Gavigan has a problem. A man known as a student of demonology – and, apparently, a pretty good magician – is found murdered in his locked apartment. The keyholes have been blocked up from the inside, the door is bolted, and so forth. The problem, however, goes beyond the locked-room nature of the crime. The problem is that just about everyone who might have had the means, motive and opportunity to murder the victim is, in fact, a stage magician.

Don’t misunderstand me – stage magicians, as such, are hardly a murderous lot. However, as Inspector Gavigan realizes – and the reason why he sends for Merlini to help him – most stage magicians understand very well the art of creating illusions. If anyone knows how to set up a murder so that it looks like an impossible crime…it might very well be a professional magician.

And, in fact, Merlini is able to explain at least a half dozen ways that the murder could have been committed. When a second murder is committed – this time in a place completely isolated by an unbroken coating of newly-fallen snow – the problem is further compounded.

Now readers who have read John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins will remember the famous “locked room lecture” in that novel, which lays out the many different ways that such impossible crimes may be solved. Well, Death from a Top Hat goes beyond Carr’s lecture; in fact, to some degree, the whole book may be thought of as an expanded lecture on how to kill someone inside a locked and guarded room. While no secrets are revealed – the secrets of professional magicians, that is – readers will come away with a heightened appreciation of the TYPE of trickery necessary to deceive audiences – whether at a séance with a false psychic, a professional magic show, or – in this case – a couple of murders.

All of this is handled with a healthy respect for the traditions of fair play, and if the reader is deceived, it is done fairly. There’s a lot of humor here as well. Merlini is extremely likeable…even if he does have the habit – I consider it a bad habit – of doing coin tricks while he speaks, absent-mindedly making coins appear and disappear through sleight of hand.

[The following has been updated as of November, 2019]

Clayton Rawson’s books were out of print for a long time, but – happily – Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics series  has recently released new editions of Rawson’s novels. If you enjoy being mystified, if you want to figure out how a killer could have escaped through those locked doors and windows, if you want to find out how a murderer got out of a house surrounded by freshly-fallen snow without leaving any footprints…then you will most certainly enjoy Death from a Top Hat.

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You can listen to the original review on the Classic Mysteries podcast by clicking here.

Next: The Castleford Conundrum, by J. J. Connington.

"The Chinese Orange Mystery"

Among the many novels written by "Ellery Queen," my favorites have long been the first few books created by Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee, the two cousins who, between them, created Ellery Queen. Among those early novels, one of the most complex puzzle plots designed to tease and tantalize the reader belongs to The Chinese Orange Mystery, first published in 1934. It is best described by the book's introduction as "The Crime That Was Backwards," for that was how it appeared to the investigators: it took place within a locked and bolted room, and, when the door was broken down and the room entered, everything in the room - including the clothes the victim was wearing - had been turned backwards. The Chinese Orange Mystery is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

In The Chinese Orange Mystery, a man arrives at the office of publisher Donald Kirk, on the 22^nd floor of the Chancellor Hotel in New York City, asking to see him. Kirk is out, and the man is shown into Kirk’s office to wait. When Donald Kirk arrives at his office, an hour or so later, he has his friend Ellery Queen (the fictional detective,as opposed to the pen name of the author) with him. Kirk isn’t expecting a visitor, but he tries to open the door into his office, where the mysterious person is waiting. He can’t – that door is bolted (and the only other entrance to the room is visible continuously from the desk of a hotel official, who has seen nobody enter or leave that room). But when Kirk and Ellery break into the room, they find the visitor dead – killed by a blow from a poker. And the room itself is chaotic, with furniture reversed and moved – and somebody (presumably the murderer) has put the victim’s clothes on the body – backwards. And, by the way, nobody can (or will) identify the victim – nor is he carrying any sort of identification.

Is Ellery's father, New York City homicide Inspector Queen, right in saying it's simply sheer madness? Ellery doesn’t think so. And as he pursues various theories, and a large number of excellent red herrings, he continues to try to find a pattern, some clue that will turn that chaotic scene into some kind of recognizable and meaningful pattern. And if you're a reader who enjoys matching wits with the author, there's a "Challenge to the Reader," near the end of the book, where the reader is invited to consider all the evidence - as Ellery does - and solve the case before Ellery Queen. I can never do it. Can you? I think you’ll find it fascinating. The Chinese Orange Mystery is back in print (and in e-book formats as well) from Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics series, and it should be readily available.

"Nine Times Nine"

At the end of this week, I will be attending Bouchercon, the world mystery convention, being held this year in Dallas, Texas. It's an annual event at which mystery authors and mystery readers meet each other and mingle, all in celebration of the many sub-genres of mystery fiction, from cozies to thrillers. This year is the fiftieth annual celebration of Bouchercon, which was named for the late Anthony Boucher, long-time reviewer and critic for the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and other major publications. Boucher, born William Anthony Parker White, was tremendously influential as an editor as well as a critic in both the Science Fiction and mystery genres, and he wrote novels and short stories in those fields along with his criticism. As Wikipedia points out, in a 1981 poll of seventeen prominent mystery authors, Boucher's novel Nine Times Nine (1940) was voted the ninth best locked room mystery novel of all time. That may be arguable, but it is certainly a fine example of the possibilities of the "impossible crime" novel. Nine Times Nine is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Nine Times Nine focuses on a religious cult known as the Temple of  Light, patterned after the many screwball religious cults that could be found in Los Angeles in the years leading up to the second world war. The charismatic leader of that cult called himself Ahasver, and he claimed to be the Wandering Jew of Christian legend. He was known to his followers – who called themselves the Children of Light -  as the Man in the Yellow Robe; any time he was seen anywhere, he wore a yellow robe, with a yellow hood. At a very public meeting of the cult, Ahasver offered a terrifying curse - what he said was the curse of the Nine Times Nine - against Wolfe Harrigan, a man working on exposing the cult and unmasking its leader.

The very next night, at the Harrigan home, witnesses outside the house saw a man in a yellow robe standing inside Wolfe’s study - Wolfe’s locked and bolted study - with only a single door that could possibly have been used for an entrance or an exit – and that door had been watched constantly. Yet when they broke down the bolted door, they found Wolfe Harrigan’s body – shot to death – and an otherwise empty room. No sign of Ahasver (or anybody else, for that matter) in a yellow robe – and no way he could have gotten out of the room. When they went to confront Ahasver at his Temple of Light, they found that at the moment when he was seen inside that study, apparently murdering Wolfe Harrigan…he was also speaking to more than a hundred of his supporters across town, who would be quite eager to attest to that fact as an alibi.

Impossible? You bet. Nine Times Nine is the kind of book that first hooked me on impossible mysteries. I suggest - strongly - that you give it a try.

From the Vault: "The Fourth Door"

Just because I describe this series of some of my earlier reviews as being "from the vault" doesn't mean the reviews have to be of very ancient books and stories. I'd like to think that at least a few of the mysteries I'd describe as "classic" are examples of modern authors writing in the style and with the traditions of classic mystery. To those who insist that nobody writes that way any more, I like to have a few examples that I think may make those disgruntled readers change their mind. Take the case of Paul Halter, a French author who began writing mysteries - most of them "impossible crime" stories - with The Fourth Door (La quatrième porte) in 1987 and continues to write new ones today. Here's my original podcast review of The Fourth Door, as usual with minor edits:

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What kind of a book does it take to make me happy?

How about a book with not one impossible murder…but two?

A book with spiritualists and séances?

A book where a medium can read a message written on a slip of paper sealed inside an envelope that is never out of sight of the witnesses?

A book in which a man is seen at exactly the same time in two separate locations, about 100 miles apart?

But a book which turns out to be fairly clued…if the reader can spot the clues?

Sound intriguing to you? As they used to say, you ain’t heard nothing yet. The book is written by a modern French author, Paul Halter. It is called – in English – The Fourth Door.

For our book this week, I’m turning to a relatively new book – only about 25 years old – by a prolific French author who is still turning out what I am told are first-rate books, many of them locked room mysteries.

Paul Halter has spoken lovingly of John Dickson Carr, that master of the locked-room mystery, and Halter’s books have often been compared with Carr’s. Now that some of Halter's books have finally been published in an English translation – thanks to the first-rate work of John Pugmire – I have the pleasure of recommending his first book, which goes by the English title, The Fourth Door.

Published originally in 1987, “The Fourth Door” is narrated (more or less) by a young man named James Stevens. James lives on the edge of a small – and unnamed – English village. (It’s worth noting that Halter’s books are set in England, even though they are written in French.) He has two good friends who will be central characters in the unfolding tragedy: Henry White, an athletic young man, and John Darnley. Darnley’s mother died some years before this story begins, an apparently gruesome suicide inside a locked room in the Darnley house. Ever since then, visitors to the house – prospective tenants – have complained about lights, footsteps and other noises apparently coming from the room where the woman died.

For some reason, this seems to discourage long-term tenants – until a couple decides to move into the mansion as tenants. Alice and Patrick Latimer are a bit unusual, in that Mrs. Latimer claims to have a medium’s spiritualistic skills. She is the one who – as I mentioned earlier – is able to read the message which has been sealed, unread, into an envelope which has been in sight of several people at all times.

And – as events seem to go from bad to worse in the haunting of that attic room – Patrick Latimer decides to spend the night inside the room where John’s mother had died. He is sealed into the room with a wax seal which has been imprinted by a rare coin – chosen moments before its use and never out of the possession of one reliable witness. But when the room is opened, Patrick has disappeared…and another unidentified man’s body is found, stabbed in the back, inside the sealed room.

Like it so far? It gets better. A second murder is committed…inside an otherwise empty house, surrounded by an unbroken layer of snow from a fresh snowfall.

And there are so many other details – that case of “co-location,” for instance, where a man is seen in two different places by two reliable witnesses – at exactly the same time. And how DID the medium manage to read that note sealed inside the envelope? And did I mention the connection to the great illusionist Harry Houdini – or at least to his spirit?

Is it spiritualism? Magic? Well…you’ll have to read The Fourth Door to find out. I will say only that you are presented with all the clues…but you may find them obscured in a carefully-created and maintained atmosphere of evil and madness.

There’s more going on here. Near the end of the book, after the second murder has happened, our narrator, James Stevens, reveals himself to be a mystery author – named John Carter, by the way, which is undoubtedly a reminder of Halter’s homage to John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson. And the narrator turns his seemingly insoluble mystery over to Dr. Alan Twist,  the central character, Dr. Fell-like, in many of Halter’s mysteries. Dr. Twist comes up with a breathtaking solution – or, perhaps more accurately, a series of breathtaking solutions which will not be fully resolved until quite literally the last words in the book.

In an article about Halter, his translator, John Pugmire, writes:

It is no mean feat to create thirty or more puzzles worthy of Carr that the maestro himself never imagined.  Furthermore, Halter, while every bit Carr’s rival in the creation of eerie atmosphere, is closer to today’s writers in his willingness to incorporate gore and horror more explicitly in his stories.

I’ll admit it. I am hooked. Translator John Pugmire has done English versions of a couple more of Halter’s books, and I am looking forward to reading them. They are available in both paperback and – far less expensively – as Amazon Kindle editions. Certainly The Fourth Door manages to create an atmosphere of horror and mystery which does really remind the reader of John Dickson Carr at his best. Paul Halter continues to write his books – and I hope they will find new audiences in their English language versions.

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You can listen to the original podcast review on Classic Mysteries by clicking here.

Next: Plot it Yourself, by Rex Stout.

"Death Has Deep Roots"

Why would a woman accused of murder in England, about to go on trial for her life, suddenly insist on changing lawyers?

Victoria Lamartine, once a member of the French resistance fighting against German occupation during World War II, a woman who had managed to escape from the Gestapo and continue fighting, was accused of the murder of Major Eric Thoseby, the man English police said had been her lover and the father of her child. Everyone agreed that she was guilty, the evidence against her was overwhelming. Even her lawyers believed in her guilt, although they were confident that she was more likely to escape the extreme penalty because of the circumstances of the case and the heroism of the accused.

So it came as quite a shock when, two days before her trial was to begin, Victoria Lamartine fired those lawyers. Instead, she hired another solicitor, "Nap" Rumbold because, she insisted, she was innocent of the crime, no matter what the evidence appeared to show - and while that evidence was very powerful indeed she insisted on being defended by a lawyer who believed in her innocence. Nap Rumbold accepted the case. And even as her trial began in London's Old Bailey courtroom, that search for proof took the solicitor and others across to France, for the crime - and its solution - will prove to have very deep roots indeed, stretching back into the violence and tragedy of World War II. It's the subject of Michael Gilbert's Death Has Deep Roots, originally published in 1951 and now being reissued as one of the British Library Crime Classics series. Already available in the U.K., it is being published in the U.S. in a couple of weeks by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, who sent me an advanced reader's copy for the purposes of this review.  You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Over the course of his career, Michael Gilbert, one of the founders of the British Crime Writers' Association, proved himself able to write easily in a variety of sub-genres. This is very much on display in Death Has Deep Roots, which cuts across several of those sub-genres to present a story which held me glued from the beginning all the way through to the last page.

• It is a powerful courtroom drama, set in London’s Old Bailey court, with the life of the defendant at stake.
• It is a thriller, following key members of the defense team as they race against the clock through France, looking for the proof they need and risking their lives against powerful enemies. 
• It is a classic detective story, with a murder to be solved and clues to discover.
• And – to at least some considerable degree – it is a fascinating picture of what life was like in France and in England during and after the brutality of World War II.

Michael Gilbert – who was one of the founders in Britain of the Crime Writers’ Association – was not only a prolific and talented author, he was also a member of a major British law firm, and his courtroom scenes in particular are compelling. He also managed to escape during the war from an Italian prisoner of war camp. In this new British Library Crime Classics edition of Death Has Deep Roots, mystery historian Martin Edwards has provided readers with an excellent introduction to Gilbert and explains how his real life experiences clearly helped him create this unusual tale of murder and suspense. It’s a remarkable book, and I really couldn’t put it down.

From the Vault: "The Lacquer Screen"

Another of my favorite fictional detectives visits us today from ancient China, though it's worth noting that he really did exist. Judge Dee was a court official in China more than a thousand years ago, a magistrate in the civil service system of justice that was well-organized in the China of the seventh century. Judge Dee was a real person - though the stories told here are the creations of author Robert Van Gulik. I've reviewed a number of Van Gulik's books about Judge Dee, all of which are certainly worth your reading time. Here's the (slightly edited) review I wrote of The Lacquer Screen:

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Come back in time with me to seventh-century imperial China. Judge Dee, the magistrate of the district of Peng-lai, is on his way home from an official conference. He stops along the way in another district, called Wei-ping, hoping to take a few days off from the duties of his demanding office. Instead, he finds himself pressed into service by the magistrate of Wei-Ping to solve three puzzling cases – including the murder of that magistrate’s wife. A murder which may have been predicted by the curious and inexplicable changes made to a scene on the magistrate’s lacquered screen. It happens in The Lacquer Screen, a Judge Dee mystery by Robert van Gulik.

Robert Van Gulik was a Dutch diplomat who spent many years in China. He was an authority on Chinese culture and loved the many ancient Chinese detective stories. Most of them were written in the 18^th century, but were set more than a thousand years earlier. In the 1940s, he translated and published one such book as The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, featuring a character who was an actual magistrate and later court official in China during the seventh century. At the end of the book, Van Gulik issued a challenge to other authors to come up with new stories, in the traditional mode, about Judge Dee. Nobody did – so Van Gulik himself went on to write sixteen books featuring the investigations of Judge Dee. All are set in the seventh century and they contain fascinating pictures of everyday life in ancient China.

The Lacquer Screen tells of a visit paid by Judge Dee to the home town of another, more senior magistrate. He arrives at a time of crisis for that magistrate, whose wife has disappeared. The magistrate tells Dee that he believes he is losing his mind. He shows his visitor a beautiful, four-panel lacquer screen on which the image of a pair of lovers has been altered to show the man stabbing the woman. The magistrate fears that he may have murdered his wife – who, in fact, has been murdered.

That is only one of three interconnected cases that Judge Dee must solve, in order to help the other magistrate but also – more importantly, in Judge Dee’s mind – to preserve the order and sanity of the world around him. The role of the Chinese magistrate was central to the organization of China’s vast civil service system; the magistrate was called the “father and mother official,” with power over virtually every aspect of everyday civilian life.

At the same time, Judge Dee must try to solve the mystery of a wealthy local businessman who appears to have gone mad and committed suicide. And there is also the matter of an apparent embezzlement of a large sum of money from that same local businessman.

In order to solve the crimes that confront him, Judge Dee must take extraordinary measures – at one point going incognito disguised as a roving thief, a position which brings him into contact with a wonderfully colorful character known as “The Corporal,” the head of the town’s underworld. In the course of his investigation, Judge Dee learns a new respect for “The Corporal” – and is left to question the integrity of the town’s magistrate.

According to Van Gulik, it was quite common for the local magistrate to be forced to solve multiple crimes at once. He relied for help on a few carefully chosen assistants, along with the local constables and other petty officials. It was Van Gulik’s genius to take this framework and rework it into a fashion that would be both exotic and familiar to modern Western readers. Speaking personally, the Judge Dee mysteries pushed me into reading a few basic books about Chinese history, to learn more about an ancient and honorable culture. The Judge Dee books can be read in just about any order; events in The Lacquer Screen take place early in Dee’s fictional career, although the book itself was the eighth original work written by van Gulik.

I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of the books, and that is certainly true of The Lacquer Screen. It provides an excellent look at a very different culture from most of the Western world, and it is filled with fascinating characters – the corporal, the underworld boss, is really a piece of work. Robert Van Gulik’s books, including The Lacquer Screen, are available both in print editions and as e-books, and they are highly recommended.

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

Next: The Fourth Door, by Paul Halter

From the Vault: "The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan"

I am always delighted, while poking around in the Classic Mysteries vault, to find Miss Hildegarde Withers snooping around among the files. If you don't know Hildy, take this opportunity to get acqainted. She's the New York schoolteacher whose demonstrated knack for solving impossible crimes (and making it appear as if her friends on the New York City police department really solved the cases) makes her invaluable in unraveling the best-laid plans of desperate killers. She was the creation of author Stuart Palmer, and usually found herself working with - or against - New York City homicide detective Oscar Piper. She also had quite a career in the movies. I've reviewed several of her books over the years. One very good one, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, has been republished as one of the American Mystery Classics series of American Golden Age mysteries from Penzler Publishers. Here's my original review of The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan as presented on the Classic Mysteries podcast about six years ago. I've updated it with information about this new edition of a mystery classic:

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One thing was certain: the Hollywood writer died of a broken neck. It certainly looked as though he had been standing on a chair while trying to redecorate his office…and the chair moved and he fell. Clearly, it must have been an accident. But then Hildegarde Withers started asking questions – for example, if it was an accident, how come nobody working near the dead writer had heard the loud crash his fall must have made? And how come there didn’t seem to be any other injuries from that fall? Of course, asking too many questions about a peculiar death could prove dangerous – as Hildy Withers would learn very quickly in The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, by Stuart Palmer.

Over the past several years, I’ve reviewed a fair number of Stuart Palmer’s excellent mysteries featuring New York City school teacher Hildegarde Withers and her sometimes friend (and sometimes detecting rival), New York City Police Inspector Oscar Piper. The characters were created in the 1930s at least in part with the movies in mind – Palmer always said that when he wrote Miss Withers, he had actress Edna May Oliver in mind – and that actress did, in fact, play Miss Withers in several movies. But the books, in general, were good mystery BOOKS as well as potential movie plots. They were generally well-plotted, sometimes containing seemingly impossible crimes, and always with a reasonable amount of humor – even if that humor was sometimes a bit grim.

The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, first published in 1941, finds Miss Withers transported – for the time being – to Los Angeles – and, more specifically, to Hollywood. She is hired as the “technical advisor” to a Hollywood studio which is trying to make a movie about the Lizzie Borden case – you remember, Lizzie Borden who may or may not have murdered her parents with her little hatchet.

But Miss Withers has barely begun work when one of the script writers is found dead in his office near Miss Withers, apparently having broken his neck in a fall. Miss Withers isn’t convinced. If the writer had fallen off a chair – the police theory – he would have made more than enough noise falling to have been heard all along the corridor where Miss Withers worked – and she and the others heard nothing.

As I said, all this is happening in Hollywood. So Miss Withers calls her old friend, Inspector Piper, across the continent in New York: can the inspector think of any cases where someone died of a broken neck? As it happens, Piper can. And he and Miss Withers quickly find an apparent connection to someone in Hollywood. But as Inspector Piper starts working on the case…well, let’s just say something very bad happens in Hollywood, something bad enough to force Piper to jump on a plane – remember, this was 1941, and plane travel was a lot less common than it is today – and he flies to Hollywood looking for a killer.

I don’t want to say too much more about the plot, for fear of spoiling it for you. Suffice to say that there will be more murders. And I must say that the solution to that seemingly impossible crime…breaking someone’s neck without signs of violence or making any noise…is a bit disappointing when it is finally revealed…although the way that the killer is persuaded to confess is absolutely delicious.

Throughout the book, there is plenty of humor. Palmer, who did work as a screenwriter turning his books into movies – and writing scripts for other films as well – has a field day writing about the movie business and the real-life celebrities of the day. Readers familiar with some of the great movies of the 1930s will recognize a lot of the names being discussed (most of whom, apparently, want nothing to do with that movie version of the Lizzie Borden case). And there is one wonderful scene where Piper and Miss Withers are at a huge Hollywood function…it includes this paragraph:

Before the inspector could register a practical protest, he found himself dragged willy-nilly through the gauntlet where Miss Withers had the surprising experience of being mistaken for Edna May Oliver and asked for an autograph.

I love the tongue-in-cheek humor. There is also a great deal of fun to be had with the Lizzie Borden movie…at one point, for example, the producer is demanding that his screenwriters rework the murder scene. A hatchet, he explains, isn’t grand enough for his movie; he wants Lizzie to have…a gigantic, medieval halberd, or pole-axe. Only in Hollywood.

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[ED, NOTE: Currently, there is a new edition of The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan republished just this year, as I noted above, by Penzler Publisher's American Mystery Classics series. When I originally reviewed the book, it was sent to me as a review e-book by Mysterious Press/Open Road Media. It is available currently in paper, e-book and audio versions. However you choose to read it, I recommend it highly.] 

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

Next: Champagne for One, by Rex Stout.

"A Puzzle for Fools"

Suppose for a moment that you were in your own room, alone, getting ready for bed one night and suddenly heard a voice saying "There will be murder."

Now suppose that the voice you heard saying that was your own voice?

Frightening?

Suppose this was happening to you at a private sanatorium - a privately owned asylum? An asylum where you had checked in voluntarily as a patient a few weeks earlier, trying to recover from acute alcoholism?

That's what was happening to Peter Duluth, a New York City theatrical producer. The horrifying accident that had claimed his wife's life had driven him to alcohol. Checking himself into Dr. Lenz's private asylum was his last attempt to dry out and save himself from his demons.

And then he heard that voice - his voice - predicting murder. And, soon enough, there would be murder indeed - brutal, violent, ugly murder. You'll find the whole story in  A Puzzle for Fools, a 1936 novel by Patrick Quentin. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

When Peter Duluth takes his story – and his fears – about hearing his own voice prophesying murder to Dr. Lenz, the man in charge of the sanatorium, he is surprised by the psychiatrist’s reaction – which is to believe him. Dr. Lenz tells Duluth that he, Duluth, would not imagine things of that sort – if he thought he heard something, there was probably something to hear. For that matter, Dr. Lenz tells him, there are other inexplicable things that have been happening in the asylum. Would Duluth help investigate? After all, Dr. Lenz says, Duluth is one of the few patients in the sanatorium whose mind is basically healthy, and quietly investigating these odd events might give him a new interest in life.

And so Duluth agrees to help – and finds that Dr. Lenz is right about a change in his own mood, that the absence of the alcohol which has nearly destroyed him becomes something he can handle.

But then there is murder – seemingly impossible murder in an establishment where the patients suffer from mental illness and the staff is focused more on psychiatry than criminality. And Duluth finds himself becoming increasingly interested in one of the female patients whom police consider to be a prime suspect.

A Puzzle for Fools is written under the name of “Patrick Quentin,” which was a pen name used by several authors writing singly or with each other. The story of "Patrick Quentin" is complicated, and if you're interested in the history of the name and its use (primarily by Hugh Wheeler and Richard Webb), I'd refer you to the excellent article in the Golden Age of Detection wiki. A Puzzle for Fools introduced Peter Duluth, who went on to appear in several more books. He’s an interesting protagonist indeed, and the readers will find themselves rooting for him. The plot is quite complex and the suspects, especially among the patients, have fascinating (and, occasionally, wildly inappropriate) reactions to the events going on around them. Patrick Quentin’s A Puzzle for Fools has now been reprinted as part of Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics series, and it should be readily available.