Classic Mysteries

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.

From the Vault: "Sealed Room Murder"

Perhaps we really should repair the locks and bolts on the Classic Mysteries vault - they always seem to be getting involved in seemingly impossible mysteries! Or at least that's how we might apportion the blame. Seemingly impossible crimes in certified-locked rooms were a specialty of many authors in the Golden Age, and their books continue to stoke my own enjoyment of such mysteries. Certainly a mystery named Sealed Room Murder sounds as if it promises an evening's worth of entertainment spent unraveling one of those mysteries which couldn't have happened - but did. The book, written by Rupert Penny in 1941, sets out to baffle us with maps, diagrams, drawings and charts contributing to the fun. And, yes, you will be given the clues you need to figure out how a baffling murder was committed. Will you rise to the challenge? Here's the audio review I did of Sealed Room Murder for the Classic Mysteries podcast nearly a decade ago - as usual, somewhat edited for clarity and availability:

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Here’s a quotation worth thinking about for locked-room mystery lovers:

“All sealed-room murders, whether in books or real life, have the same objects: first to remove the victim or victims, secondly to balk investigation. If you can trick the police into believing that somebody performed a miracle, you’re safe from anything worse than suspicion. The essential quality of a miracle is that it can’t be explained, and what can’t be explained isn’t punishable.”

The speaker, of course, is a fictional character, Chief Inspector Edward Beale of New Scotland Yard. He speaks because he is in the middle of investigating an absolutely impossible crime – one of those murders that couldn’t possibly have happened, yet did. The case is called  Sealed Room Murder, by Rupert Penny, a British author who wrote towards the end of the Golden Age period between the two world wars. His books are largely forgotten today. Based on his last novel, Sealed Room Murder, that seems a pity. This 1941 impossible crime novel is now back in print, giving a new generation of readers – including me – a chance to discover an amazingly well-done locked room mystery.

Sealed Room Murder tends to move rather slowly, from a modern reader’s vantage point, but the slowness is due in part to the author’s thoroughness in setting up the impossible crime that is at the heart of this mystery.

We are presented with a thoroughly unpleasant woman, living in a house along with the relatives of her late husband – and thoroughly detested by just about everyone who knows her. We are told quite early in the book that this woman, Mrs. Harriett Steele, is going to be murdered. She makes life miserable for the people who live with her – this is another of those stories where someone’s last will and testament has forced these people to live together in order to inherit eventual wealth. In return, someone in the house is playing very ugly tricks on Mrs. Steele – pouring ink over a drawer full of her underwear, smashing a cherished grandfather clock, carving chunks of wood out of a parquet floor. She calls in a private investigator, Tony Purdon, to try to find out who is responsible – for she means to have revenge on the vandals. And Purdon, though he quickly comes to detest Mrs. Steele just as the others in the house detest her, does begin questioning the residents of the house, along with the servants, trying to discover what’s going on.

What’s going on, of course, is an elaborate plot leading to murder: Mrs. Steele is eventually murdered (just as we have been told, repeatedly, that she would be killed) – but in an absolutely impossible way: she is stabbed in the back apparently while alone inside a room whose doors are locked and bolted. Fortunately for Tony Purdon, his friend, Chief Inspector Edward Beale of New Scotland Yard is called into the case. It is very hard to pull the wool over Inspector Beale’s eyes – and he will eventually, with Tony’s help, be able to explain the case. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Inspector Beale won’t buy the impossible aspects of the crime – for, as he points out repeatedly, obviously it can NOT have been impossible, because it happened. And his job will be to find out how it happened.

All of this is set up very carefully for the reader, for the author clearly is a believer in the idea that crime fiction is a grand game between the author, who must hide the clues in plain sight, and the reader who must properly interpret those clues. And it is worth noting that before presenting the solution to the problem, in the final chapter, the author tells us the following:

“The problem is now complete, the previous chapters containing all the data necessary to a full solution. Accordingly, who murdered Mrs. Steele? Or, for those readers who like hard work, how was the murder committed?”

That’s a pretty direct challenge, bringing to mind, for example, many of the early Ellery Queen novels, where that same kind of “challenge to the reader” was given a very similar formal presentation. Inspector Beale goes on to explain how it was done, and by whom. Be forewarned that this involves a number of charts and diagrams – certainly, for me, this makes it more difficult to believe that a murderer would go to that much trouble, but as a mystery with a locked room crime, it’s a fascinating and rather ingenious solution.

Rupert Penny only wrote eight mysteries (plus a ninth, under the name Martin Tanner), and most were long out of print. Now, Ramble House has brought back The Sealed Room Murder and all of the other Rupert Penny mysteries as well in "Print On Demand" editions. Based on my enjoyment of this one, I will be looking for the others as well.

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

Next: Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, by Stuart Palmer.

"Rocket to the Morgue"

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.

"The Mad Hatter Mystery"

It began really with what seemed to be practical jokes at best (or at worst, depending on your point of view). Somebody was stealing top hats and other headgear from a number of prominent people - snatching them off their owners' heads and escaping into a crowd. The hats would later turn up in unlikely but, perhaps, appropriate places: a barrister's wig, for example, was found on the head of a taxi driver's horse. And then, perhaps inevitably, there was a murder - and the victim had, on his head, one of the missing top hats. That's when Dr. Gideon Fell got involved in the search for an explanation and a solution. You'll find the story in The Mad Hatter Mystery, by John Dickson Carr. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you are welcome to listen to the complete review by clicking here.

The press clearly was enjoying the story of the stolen hats and the apparent inability of the police to do anything about them. The police were not amused and, increasingly, highly frustrated. There were other, more serious crimes, to be solved - for example, the theft of a priceless manuscript, a previously unknown detective story by Edgar Allan Poe. Only Dr. Fell thought there might be some connection between the theft of the manuscript and the theft of the hats.

While John Dickson Carr is remembered primarily for his mastery of the “impossible crime” mystery, he was also a master of the eerie atmosphere. In a Carr novel, you might be reading a passage that strikes you as very funny – and suddenly find something very cold and chilling lurking at its heart. Originally published in 1933, The Mad Hatter Mystery was Carr’s second book to feature Dr. Gideon Fell as his protagonist. Dr. Fell was based on the real-life author G. K. Chesterton (whom Carr admired), and he would go on to become one of Carr’s primary sleuths. Although this book is not really about murder in a locked room, it has a brilliant and complex plot that is certain to grip the reader. And when it ends, the reader will see that he or she was given every necessary clue – but those clues are so well disguised that they slip right past that reader’s eyes. As with so many of Carr’s novels, his story creates an unforgettable atmosphere that aims – quite successfully, in my opinion – at throwing the reader off-balance, making seemingly inexplicable events suddenly believable. Long out of print, publisher Otto Penzler has brought out a new edition as part of his American Mystery Classics series. I recommend The Mad Hatter Mystery very highly.

"Beware of the Trains"

Sorry to be a bit late in posting this one today, but I've spent the past couple of days celebrating (1) my wife's birthday and (2) Mothers Day. So perhaps it's fitting that I offer a present to you as well - or sixteen presents, even better. They're the sixteen short stories contained in Beware of the Trains, by Edmund Crispin, one of my favorite authors, and fourteen of the sixteen stories feature Oxford University Professor Gervase Fen, often aiding his (not always very bright) friend, Inspector Humbleby. It's the book that is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast.

Rather than duplicate effort, if you'd like more information about the sixteen stories in  Beware of the Trains, please listen to the complete podcast review, which will give you brief descriptions of each story. Things should be back to what passes for normal here later in the week. If you've never read Crispin, this is a fine way to meet him.

 

 

"Challenge the Impossible"

I mean, really. Short stories. Impossible crimes solved by Dr. Sam Hawthorne, an engaging small-town doctor. And all by the amazing Edward D. Hoch, surely one of the most prolific writers of short crime stories. Really, what's not to love?

How amazing was the late Edward D. Hoch? Consider just this one point: Ed Hoch had a story published in every issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine beginning in May, 1973 and running in an unbroken chain for 35 years until after his death in 2008. He wrote just a few novels, but saw nearly a thousand of his short stories published. They weren't all Dr. Sam stories, not all "impossible crimes," because Ed Hoch had a number of different series, quite different from each other, but all terrific examples of crime fiction and many of its sub-genres. 

The publishers at Crippen & Landru have released five volumes, containing all the Dr. Sam stories. I've already written about the first four (and you'll find them on the backlist page, reached from the box on the right). Challenge the Impossible is the last collection. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

What kind of stories will you find here? Among others:

• A murder in a hospital room that apparently must have been committed by a ghost;
• A double murder in a locked and bolted house;
• A young man practically vanishes before townspeople's astonished eyes;
• Could a snowman have committed murder - and then simply melted away?
• A seance is interrupted by murder.

And ten other stories. I'm sure you get the idea. Crimes that appear to have been impossible - but weren't, really, and Dr. Sam Hawthorne reveals the tricks. Sounds like fun, you say? Believe me, it is. You'll eat these up like a good chocolate dessert. Another author and an old friend of Ed Hoch, Josh Pachter, contributes an excellent introduction, adding still another reason why you need this book. Edward D. Hoch. Challenge the Impossible. Go ahead. Do it.

"Pass the Body" (or "Crime in Kensington")

Like so many other residential hotels in Kensington, the Garden Hotel was an uninspiring arrangement of stucco, tiled doorsteps, aspidistras, revolving doors, verandahs and hall porter.

"It looks neither odd nor comfortable," reflected  Venables, negotiating the steps, the hall porter, the doors and the aspidistra...

Well, Charles Venables is likely to be proven only half correct in his initial assessment of the Garden Hotel. He is correct in assuming that the hotel is unlikely to prove very comfortable. But it most certainly is odd, at the very least, as are many of the rather eccentric residents. And the occurrences of a disappearance from and a murder within a locked room in the hotel surely must be considered as odd. Also, as Charles has discovered, the price paid by its guests was distinctly too low. The details will be found in an English Golden Age mystery that appears to be available, at the moment, under two different titles: as a paperback book, it is called Pass the Body, which was its American title, while as an e-book it is known by the title, Crime in Kensington, by which it was originally published in the U.K. in 1933. It was the first mystery to be written by Christopher St. John Sprigg (who wrote as "Christopher Caudwell"). It is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you may listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Charles Venables, now earning a (somewhat) precarious living as a gossip columnist for the Daily Mercury, finds himself on the scene for the very unfortunate goings-on at the Garden Hotel. His friend, Lady Viola Merritt, daughter of the Earl of Buxley, was already a resident of the Garden Hotel and had suggested that Charles move in to the hotel, because of the low price and the surprisingly high quality of the amenities. Even on the day of his arrival, Charles found the hotel a bit unusual, to say the least. As he reflected:

"This is really too awful...When one hears a bloke threaten to kill his wife and then immediately afterwards meets a sinister and mysterious Oriental, it is time to move somewhere else, for one has obviously walked into the plot of a thriller of the vulgarest and most exciting description."

And that night, Mrs. Budge, who owns the Garden Hotel along with her husband, disappears from her bedroom (and another older resident is attacked in that same room as well) – and yet nobody could have entered or left the room unobserved. It won’t be long before a particularly gruesome discovery brings Scotland Yard – in the person of Detective Inspector Bernard Bray – into the case. Inspector Bray will find an ally in Charles Venables – who has some useful skills in his own background that will be helpful to both of them in solving a shocking murder case – and, with it, uncovering the secrets of the Garden Hotel.

In his brief lifetime, Christopher St. John Sprigg wrote only seven mystery novels – before he went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War, where he died in battle. Pass the Body was the first of his crime books, and it reinforces my enjoyment of, and respect for, Sprigg’s plotting skill and extremely witty writing. It is available as a paperback under the title Pass the Body or as an e-book entitled Crime in Kensington. If you enjoy impossible crimes, interesting characters, and clever writing, you will enjoy this book.

From the Vault: "The Judas Window"

If you are a fan of the impossible crime or locked room story, as I am, then you are probably familiar with the name of John Dickson Carr (who also wrote as "Carter Dickson"). If you are a fan of the impossible crime or locked room story and you are not familiar with the name of John Dickson Carr, then it's time you read at least one of his best books. I'm sure there are good reasons why Carr - so far - has not been widely reprinted by publishers who have been bringing back so many fine Golden Age authors, but I do not know what those reasons are. I do hear, from time to time, rumblings about plans to make some of his books available - and I've found that one of his best is available currently as an e-book. So while we wait for the day when we can again find affordable paper editions of some of Carr's other fine books, here's my review from the Classic Mysteries vault of The Judas Window, originally published in 1938 as being by Carter Dickson and featuring the irascible Sir Henry Merrivale as its detective. As usual, the text of my review has been slightly tweaked:

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How’s this for a nightmare situation: you wake up, aware that you have been drugged, to find yourself alone in a room with a dead man. He appears to have been stabbed with an arrow that had been hanging on the wall. The window is securely shuttered and locked. The door is locked and bolted on the inside. There is no way in or out of the room – and there is nobody else in the room. And someone is knocking on the door. That’s the situation in The Judas Window, by Carter Dickson – the pen name of John Dickson Carr.

John Dickson Carr was, and remains, the acknowledged master of the locked room mystery. As Carter Dickson, he wrote a series of impossible crime novels featuring his detective, Sir Henry Merrivale, H. M. as his friends call him. In The Judas Window, Sir Henry winds up in the role of defense lawyer in court, defending the young man I described a moment ago, who is, of course, accused of the murder.

Let’s recap: James Answell, the young man in question, has been called to the house of his fiancee’s father – a man he has never met. The two enter a room. The father begins – in Answell’s eyes, at least – to act strangely, and appears to be picking a fight. But then Answell passes out. When he wakes, perhaps 20 minutes later, he finds the scene as I described it a moment ago. His future father-in-law has been murdered inside a locked room, with no way in or out. Witnesses, who overheard the start of an argument between the two men, are able to testify that nobody has entered or left the room. The whiskey decanter which Answell says contained the drugged liquor is full (and there are no drugs in it) and the glasses are clean, and a doctor called to the scene says he can see no signs that Answell was drugged.

There is, in short, nothing to believe except that Answell has committed the murder, having quarreled with his fiancee’s father. He is arrested, charged with the murder, and his trial takes place in that great court of London known as the Old Bailey.

But Answell does have one thing going for him: Sir Henry Merrivale agrees to take the case for the defense. Because Sir Henry thinks he knows what really happened. The crime was committed, he says, through use of the Judas Window.

And what, you may ask, is the Judas Window? Obviously it’s going to be a while before Sir Henry reveals that to you. Is it some obscure secret? Hardly. It is, as H.M. says repeatedly, the key to the whole plot (not to mention the title of the book). Some obscure secret passage? No. As H.M. observes pretty early on in the book, you will find a Judas Window in just about every room you enter. The trouble, as he says, is that so few people even notice it.

Does it sound as if Carr is playing with the reader? He is. Most shamelessly. And quite thoroughly. The book is primarily a courtroom drama – something a bit unusual for Carr, but not at all out of place. And the locked room mystery, which is so clearly at the heart of this book, is well and fairly presented to the reader. H. M. even gives the reader a carefully worked-out timetable, with names and events neatly outlined and his own comments penciled carefully into the margin. And yet I’m willing to bet that most readers won’t tumble to the solution before H.M. is ready to deliver it – and that will follow quite a set of courtroom theatrics. As one of the characters says to him, at the very end of the book, “I am inclined to suspect that you are a disgrace to all the splendid traditions of the fairness of English law.”

There are critics who have called The Judas Window the best locked room mystery of all time. I’m not sure I agree with that; as I have said before, I still think Carr’s The Three Coffins (known in England as The Hollow Man), takes that honor. But The Three Coffins is much more complex in its locked rooms and impossible crimes, depending on a series of more-or-less unlikely events and the careful misleading of the reader. The solution to the locked room problem in “The Judas Window,” by contrast, is breathtakingly simple – in fact, as is often the case with such books, there’s a tendency to feel somewhat disappointed, to say, “is that all?” That’s unfair to the genius of the author, who has managed to practically rub our noses in the concept of the Judas Window – and yet conceal his meaning until the end of the novel – and, by doing so, he misdirects us admirably.

As always with Carr, the reader can’t help but be aware that he or she is in the hands of a master manipulator – but one who essentially plays fairly throughout. It is a book that belongs in every mystery lover’s library.

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Next: If Death Ever Slept, by Rex Stout.