Classic Mysteries

The Twelve Reading Days of Christmas

For the Classic Mysteries blog and podcast this week, may I present all my readers here with a gift: a list of twelve mysteries that may help instill a bit of the Christmas spirit into the stoutest Grinch. I would hope that you'd take your list down to your favorite mystery bookstore, whose staff, I'm sure, would be happy to help you fill your shopping basket with these books. Believe me, those bookstores really can use your support. Another reason for me to celebrate: this is podcast # 600 - give or take a couple of the early ones. We're at about 11 1/2 years of doing the podcast; the blog came a year or so later.

That said, and in an effort to keep the size of this post to a level where it really is readable, let me urge you to listen to today's podcast (#600!!), which contains brief descriptions of each of the twelve books, along with other useful information about the Twelve Reading Days of Christmas. Then, as you wish, please look at the links below. For each book, I have provided a link to my original podcast review. For all but one of them, I have also provided a link to each book's original post on this blog. The exception is Ngaio Marsh's Tied Up in Tinsel, which was reviewed on the podcast before the blog began, meaning I have nowhere to link.

This is being posted about two weeks ahead of the holiday, so I'm hoping many of you will take advantage of the opportunities to add to your collections and to enjoy what I suppose is a more murderous way to greet the season. May we all have something to celebrate during this season.

The twelve books:

1. Agatha Christie, Murder for Christmas   click for podcast     click for blog post

 

2. Rex Stout, "Christmas Party." In And Four to Go.     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

3. Georgette Heyer, Envious Casca     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

4. Nicholas Blake, Thou Shell of Death     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

5. T. Jefferson Farjeon, Mystery in White     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

6. Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

7. Ngaio Marsh, Tied Up in Tinsel     click for podcast     Blog post unavailable. Sorry!

 

8. Charlotte Macleod, Rest You Merry     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

9. Mavis Doriel Hay, The Santa Klaus Murder     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

10. Francis Duncan, Murder for Christmas     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

11. Martin Edwards (ed.), Crimson Snow     click for podcast     click for blog post

 

12. John Mortimer, A Rumpole Christmas     click for podcast     click for blog post

I do hope you'll get the chance to read and enjoy at least a few of these. I'm off to celebrate with the world's friendliest mouse at Disney World. See you next week!

"The Division Bell Mystery"

A murder in Britain's House of Commons! Well, a fictional one anyway, and the parliament, politics and characters involved are all from the first third of the twentieth century. But given the intense battles over politics in the United States this year - some of which, clearly, continue to be fought - it seems very appropriate, at the end of that American political year, to relax a bit with a classic Golden Age mystery about an English murder that seemed to have the potential to bring down the English government. The story may be found in The Division Bell Mystery, a 1932 mystery by Ellen Wilkinson, one of the first women ever to be elected to Parliament. It is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you are invited to listen to the complete review by clicking here.

The Division Bell Mystery is a political mystery from the Golden Age, being re-published as one of the British Library Crime Classics series. Poisoned Pen Press is publishing the book this week in the United States, and the publisher provided me with a copy for review.

The central character of the book, a young member of parliament named Robert West, serves as what is called the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. It is in that capacity that he is present in the House of Commons one evening, when the members await the sounding of the division bell calling them to scheduled parliamentary votes. But as the bell rings, it is almost drowned out by the sound of a shot. Robert is closest to the door of the small private Parliamentary dining room, Room J, where that shot was fired. When he rushes to the locked door, he finds the body of a very rich – and very important - American financier, a dinner guest of the Home Secretary, shot to death. The victim was alone in the locked room. Was it a suicide? The Scotland Yard police officer in charge is not convinced. And so Robert West, the humble P-P-S, as those low-level and overworked functionaries are called, will find himself – with police blessing – acting as an amateur detective, dealing with a politically charged murder that could cause a financial crisis in London and even bring down the government. Robert was quite used to the arcane practices of the House of Commons – and he would soon find himself dealing – very diplomatically, to be sure! – with some extremely important people, all of whom had secrets to hide.

All of this, of course, makes for a good, lively mystery. To me, the book is also made vastly more interesting because its author, Ellen Wilkinson, drew on her experience as an elected member of parliament and put a great deal of insider knowledge into the book both about the scenes inside Parliament and about some of the politics involved. As usual, mystery historian Martin Edwards provides an introduction, focusing his attention this time on politics in Golden Age detective fiction. There is also a preface, written for this new edition by Rachel Reeves, another elected Member of Parliament. I recommend the book to you very highly indeed.

From the Vault: "His Burial Too"

Let's take a look back today at a really clever "impossible crime" story: someone is killed in a church tower when a giant statue is tipped over and smashed into small pieces. Unfortunately, rubble from the smashup blocks all the entrances and exits - yet, while the victim most definitely could NOT have committed suicide by toppling the statue on himself single-handedly, there is no sign of anyone else in that tower. What caused that enormous statue to fall on its victim? The answer may be found in His Burial Too, written in 1973 by Catherine Aird, one of her "Calleshire Chronicles" featuring Inspector C. D. Sloan of the Calleshire police. Here's my original review from the Classic Mysteries podcast, updated somewhat with availability information:

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One thing was very clear to Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan: the man found dead in the church tower could not have committed suicide. He had been killed when a giant memorial statue was toppled over onto him. The statue was smashed into a lot of smaller pieces, most of which quite effectively blocked the doors and made it impossible for anyone to get in or out of the room. Yet the victim was there, under the statue – and there was nobody else in the tower, nor was there any other way in or out. Inspector Sloan was not happy. Neither was his boss, Superintendent Leeyes, who groaned irritably and said, “Not another of those locked room mysteries, Sloan, I hope.” Unfortunately, that’s exactly what he gets in His Burial Too by Catherine Aird.

The impossible crime at the heart of Catherine Aird’s His Burial Too is really one of the more ingenious plots I’ve read. Consider the problem: a man is found, quite clearly murdered, crushed by a gigantic statue that has been toppled over on him. The statue is massive; there is no way that anyone could have pushed it over single-handedly. Even more conclusively, though, the destruction of the statue has resulted in huge chunks of marble blocking all the doors so that it is impossible to open them – in fact, when the police need to get into the sealed room, a crew of workers must use welding equipment to remove the door from its hinges. So how did the statue get pushed over onto the victim – and how did the killer escape from the room?

The job of answering those questions falls to Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan. He is assisted – although that may be the wrong word – by Detective Constable Crosby, a young man so dense that he is referred to by other officers as “the defective constable.” In all of Catherine Aird’s books about Sloan, the inspector is invariably weighted down with the dubious assistance of Crosby because there simply is nobody else in the small local police department available to work on the case.

Sloan’s problems also extend to the higher-ups in the local constabulary, for his superior, Superintendent Leeyes, is extremely irascible and not particularly helpful, cherishing his own feuds with other police departments and always taking self-improvement classes, which he does not always understand. Aird describes it this way:

The various instruction courses attended by Police Superintendent Leeyes left their scars in a way which would have astonished the highly skilled instructors who lectured at them had they known. Like a sticky snail the Superintendent strewed a trail of imperfectly assimilated concepts behind him: not only did they show where he had been but they were a nuisance to the unwary.

All the same, Inspector Sloan manages to negotiate his way through something of a minefield when dealing with the superintendent – sometimes by reflecting on his own need to preserve his future police pension!

Catherine Aird juggles these elements quite nicely, with a great deal of quiet humor and writing which brings out the conflicts among the characters. As with most of her stories, there are some elements of a police procedural here: Sloan and the other police do their questioning and collect their evidence, discarding false trails as they are discovered. But this is still primarily a puzzle mystery, with that most peculiar locked room problem at its heart. As Sloan realizes, the problem is not only how the murder was accomplished, the question is why it was necessary to go to such elaborate lengths. As with any good mystery, the reader is presented with clues, although I suspect most may be led astray by the assorted false leads. If you enjoy witty mysteries, with intelligent protagonists and believable characters, you are quite likely to savor this book, His Burial Too, by Catherine Aird.

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Since this review was written several years ago, Open Road Media has brought many of Catherine Aird's titles back in e-book formats. There are also print copies, mostly used, I believe, available through your local mystery bookstore or through Amazon's network of second-hand booksellers. I do recommend the book quite highly, particularly if you haven't yet met Sloan and company.

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

Next: Holy Disorders, by Edmund Crispin.

 

From the Vault: "Diagnosis: Impossible"

Back we go into the vault again and come out bearing...impossibilities. My favorite kind of traditional mysteries: crimes which simply couldn't have happened - but did happen. Locked rooms, victims surrounded by unbroken fields of snow - I'm sure my visitors here know many examples of these wonderful mysteries. So today, let's look at some stories by a master of the genre, Edward D. Hoch, and his long string of stories starring Dr. Sam Hawthorne, a New England doctor with a real knack for untangling the secrets of impossible-crime stories and revealing those secrets for the illusory magician's tricks that they are. The Dr. Sam stories are gathered now in four good-sized trade paperbacks from Crippen & Landru. The first collection was called Diagnosis: Impossible, the Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, and it was the subject of my audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast all the way back in 2010. Here's what I had to say about it:

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Hi there. Come on in and chat for a while. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Dr. Sam has been practicing medicine in a small town in Connecticut for quite a while now. But – much more than that – he’s also helped solve some pretty amazing mysteries while he was going about his business. Amazing – because the crimes all appeared on the surface to be impossible. So sit down, pour yourself a small libation, as Dr. Sam might say, and get ready for Diagnosis Impossible: The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, by Edward D. Hoch.

Talk about amazing: Edward D. Hoch was a pretty amazing author. Hoch, who passed away in 2008, only wrote a handful of novels in his career. But I think he was unequalled in short stories, turning out some 950 of them in the course of his writing career. He had a number of different series detectives. But our focus today is on one character, Dr. Sam Hawthorne. Hoch wrote dozens of stories about Dr. Sam, all published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine from 1974 until his death in 2008. Every one of them is about an impossible crime – usually murder. In many ways, Hoch was the successor to the 20^th century master of locked room mysteries, John Dickson Carr – in fact, Carr once said of Hoch, "Satan himself would be proud of his ingenuity."

The publishing house of Crippen and Landru has issued a number of anthologies of stories by Hoch. In Diagnosis: Impossible, we are given the first dozen of his stories about Dr. Sam Hawthorne. The stories are all fascinating: in each case, we see a seemingly impossible crime committed. Police are baffled. But Dr. Sam, who is observant and intelligent, is able to figure out what really happened and solve the crime – although he doesn’t always turn the criminal over to the authorities.

What kind of situations are we talking about?

• How about the case of a man driving a horse and carriage into a covered bridge – and never coming out the other side? The driver, horse and carriage all simply disappear.
• How about a politician murdered in full view of witnesses by what appears to be a homicidal ghost who appears, stabs his victim – and vanishes in a puff of smoke.
• Or the kidnapping of a schoolboy who simply disappears from a schoolyard swing.
• Or the captured escape artist who manages to get out of a locked jail cell and out through a locked stairway door without anybody seeing him.
• Or the stunt actor who parachutes into a supposedly haunted oak tree…but is found to have been strangled AFTER he jumped and BEFORE he could get down from the tree.
• Or another politician who is stabbed to death in front of witnesses as he leaves a voting booth – yet there’s no sign of a killer or knife.

Are we having fun yet? I certainly hope so. There are a dozen of these stories, and they all feature some apparently impossible situation. And, yes, there are natural and honest (if sometimes improbable) solutions to all of these problems. As always with such stories, it can be a lot like learning how a magic trick was really done – there’s a tendency on the reader’s part to say, “Is that all there was to it?” That’s an unfair, if quite understandable, reaction, and it should never be strong enough to keep a reader from savoring these remarkable stories.

They’re all set in the Connecticut town of Northmont, where Dr. Sam Hawthorne lives and works. And they are historical mysteries as well as impossible crimes – they’re all set in the 1920s, a time when America was struggling with prohibition, a situation which plays a significant role in several of the stories. Hoch wrote them for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and intended them to be a regular series, as they were. Each story begins with Dr. Sam welcoming his anonymous listener – that would be you – and offering what he calls, in those days of prohibition, "a small libation" of brandy. And each story in this collection ends with a one or two line preview of the next one. It was a good gimmick, which was continued long after the first dozen stories had appeared.

Are the stories fair to the reader? Yes…although we are not always given some of the key clues early enough to draw our own logical conclusions. But we ARE told the facts we need to know. And, frankly, much of the fun in these stories comes from realizing that we are watching a fine magician at work, producing these impossible illusions before our eyes. Diagnosis Impossible is a wonderful introduction to Ed Hoch’s stories about Dr. Sam. I’m looking forward to reading more of them.

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Over the past several years, Crippen & Landru have published three more volumes of Ed Hoch's Dr. Sam stories. You can find links on the Classic Mysteries backlist page (just scroll down to "Hoch" on the list). 

Next: Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler.

"The Case of the Murdered Major"

With the outbreak of World War II, Britain found itself in need of such things as Prisoner of War camps, to house captured enemy fighters, some refugees and interned civilians. So it was that Ludovic Travers, that very successful amateur investigator of major crimes, became Captain Ludovic Travers, the Adjutant Quartermaster (and second in command) of Prisoner of War Camp #54, in the city of Shoreleigh. It wasn't going to be an easy job, and the camp's commandant, Major Percival Stirrop, described as "a bantam of a man, full of quick and self-important nervousness," most certainly wasn't going to make it any easier. A nasty, incompetent officer, a monkey wrench in the efficient mechanism of the camp's operation, the major was a source of immense frustration to Travers and the other officers and men charged with the camp's operation. So perhaps it won't come as much of a surprise to find Major Stirrop dead - murdered, lying in a field of snow unbroken by any other footprints. Fortunately, Scotland Yard sent in a senior officer to help the military with their investigation: Ludovic Travers's old friend, Superintendent George Wharton. He and Captain Travers will have to solve The Case of the Murdered Major, which is the title of the 1941 mystery by Christopher Bush which is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

 The Case of the Murdered Major provides the reader with a powerful and exciting view of an England on the verge of war (for it is set just before the war actually begins). Against that backdrop, an impossible murder and the search for a murderer – and quite possibly for senior enemy agents and high-ranking Nazi officials trying to get into England to be ready for the war – makes a fascinating detective story. I must admit I couldn’t put it down – and I was caught off-guard by several of the story’s twists.

Dean Street Press is continuing its project of re-issuing all of Christopher Bush's 63 mysteries that featured Ludovic Travers, and the publisher sent me an e-book version of The Case of the Murdered Major for this review. According to mystery historian Curtis Evans, who provides a very helpful introduction to this book and to the rest of Bush's work as well, this was the first of a trilogy of wartime books which was based on Bush’s own experiences as an administrator of a real prisoner of war camp in England early in the war. It's quite good, and I recommend it to you.

From the Vault: "Envious Casca"

One of the Golden Age (and slightly later) authors whom I feel has been quite unjustly neglected lately is Georgette Heyer. She's still known primarily as a writer of period romances, but she also wrote a dozen classic mysteries, and she wrote them with style and grace. I've reviewed a number of her books on the Classic Mysteries podcast. Here's a review of one of my favorites among her works: Envious Casca. Here's what I had to say about the book, several years back. As always, I've edited a few things, including revising the information about the book's availability nowadays:

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Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to hold a family reunion over the Christmas holidays? A time when family members and friends get together for a little old-fashioned celebration. Of course, the head of the family is a tyrannical and bad-tempered old man. His brother is a wooly-headed optimist. His nephew matches the old man in personality and temper AND is engaged to a pure gold-digger. His niece is an actress who wants him to pour money into an awful new play by an unknown author. His business partner is engaged in some shady deals. What could possibly go wrong? That’s the situation we find in Envious Casca, by Georgette Heyer.

When we remember Georgette Heyer as an author today, it is primarily for her historical novels and her regency romances, books that are quite charming in their way but hardly mysteries. But Georgette Heyer also wrote a dozen thrillers. Critics and students of Golden Age mysteries differ on the overall quality of the thrillers – but there’s general agreement that one of the best of them is the book Envious Casca, originally published in 1941. It combines some interesting characters with a great deal of humor – and it throws in an excellent locked-room murder as well.

As Envious Casca opens, we meet Joseph Herriard. He’s a former actor, now retired, who has brought his wife to live at Lexham Manor, the country house owned by his older – and much wealthier – brother, Nathaniel. Joseph is an incurable optimist, always eager to see the best in anyone. He has been plotting to bring together a normally hostile collection of relatives and friends for what he is sure will be an old-fashioned family Christmas. Somehow, he succeeds in bringing everyone together and gathering them at the family estate. His hopes for family togetherness, however, are not going to succeed.

Old Nathaniel Herriard, Joseph’s older brother, is a bad-tempered and tyrannical person who probably should never have let his younger brother talk him into inviting everyone to Lexham. His nephew, Stephen, arrives with his young, not very smart gold-digger fiancée. Stephen’s sister, Paula, who is an actress, comes to the party with a young man who has written a new (and pretty awful) play; Paula wants her rich uncle to finance the play. Not likely. Paula and Stephen inherit their uncle’s bad temper, which doesn’t help the overall atmosphere a bit. There is another, more distant, cousin on hand, named Maud Clare. There is old Nathaniel’s business partner, who also seems to quarrel with the old man. And there are a variety of other characters, all of whom appear to be very much at odds with each other. The bottom line, of course, is that virtually everyone present probably could have had a good reason for murder – and, when that murder happens, there are plenty of suspects.

Unfortunately for the police, the murder is one of those impossible crimes – the victim is found stabbed to death inside a locked room, with no weapon in sight. So the police, represented eventually by Scotland Yard detective inspector Hemingway, must not only figure out who killed the victim – but how the crime could have been committed at all.

Now if what I’ve been describing to you sounds like a collection of clichés and stereotypes, you might have a point. But beware. Georgette Heyer may present what seem to be stereotypical characters – but she will then surprise you and present different evidence that can radically change your opinion of those characters and their behavior. The locked room murder is quite ingenious – yet quite fairly solved, and the reader is given a series of hints, many of which are very cleverly hidden in the story.

Heyer is also genuinely funny in a lot of her descriptions, and I found myself laughing out loud at some of it. At one point after the murder, for example, the mother of Stephen’s gold-digging fiancée arrives on the scene to comfort her daughter:

“My little girl mustn’t let her nerves run away with her,” said Mrs. Dean bracingly. “Who could possibly want to murder you, my pet?” A glance at Stephen’s face might have provided her with a possible answer, but happily she did not look in his direction.

I enjoyed Envious Casca. I liked the way the characters developed from the stereotypical country-house-mystery types into very different individuals. I enjoyed the locked room murder, which, as I say, was well- and fairly-clued. And I very much liked the humor. Envious Casca remains available in both print and electronic editions.

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

Next: Double for Death, by Rex Stout - NOT a Nero Wolfe story!

"The Hangman's Handyman"

Can you kill someone simply by cursing them?

On this blog, I have written a number of posts in the past about an impossible-crime locked-room mystery called Rim of the Pit, by Hake Talbot. Among mystery readers and critics who enjoy such mysteries, it is considered to be among the best of the best. Its author, Hake Talbot, wrote only two mystery novels, of which Rim of the Pit was the second. I have finally read Talbot's first novel, The Hangman's Handyman, written two years before Rim of the Pit, in 1942, and it is now available from Ramble House publishers and other sources. 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.

The Hangman's Handyman begins with gambler Rogan Kincaid arriving at a lonely house on a remote island off the Carolina coast known as the Kraken. He is one of the guests at what is supposed to be a dinner party at the home of a casual acquaintance, Jack Frant, who owns the island. Kincaid finds a young woman wandering in the front hall who apparently fainted during dinner and woke up to find herself alone in her room – with no idea what caused her to faint or the whereabouts of the other guests. Bit by bit, she recovers, as those guests begin to reappear, and she soon learns that she fainted out of sheer terror: their host, she says, is dead – killed quite literally by a curse, words spoken by the victim’s half-brother, an English lord in fact named Evan Tethryn. So Rogan hears the story of a family curse, and of how Jack Frant tormented his half-brother Evan, who believed that he, Evan, had the power to cast that curse. Then…well, here’s how another guest at this very peculiar party, Sue Makepeace, describes what happened, as Frant continued to torment his brother about the curse:

“He said…” Sue gulped. “’By God, you’ve asked for it and here it is. Od rot you, Jack! Od rot you!’”

The girl took a deep breath and shuddered. She was silent for so long that Rogan asked, “What happened then?”

“Mr. Frant died.”

Kincaid stared at her. “But surely there must have been something else?”

Evan laughed harshly. “There wasn’t anything else. My brother…'did thereupon fall down and was found to be dead.’”

Rogan had no answer for that. There was none.

 

And the victim's body - in the few hours since all this took place - apparently has almost completely decomposed. Od rot you indeed...

It's quite a story - not as sharp, perhaps, as Rim of the Pit, some loose ends and coincidences and such - but still very much worth reading, packed with atmosphere, with touches of genuine horror and some grim humor. Recommended for lovers of "impossible" crime, nightmarish scenarios, and some very powerful writing.

 

From the Vault: "Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee"

For many years, I have been a fan of Robert Van Gulik's marvelous mysteries featuring Judge Dee, of T'ang Dynasty China. Dee Jen-djieh was, in fact, a real, historic figure who served in the Imperial Court and elsewhere around the latter part of the seventh century. While Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat and scholar who served in China and elsewhere, wrote all of the later Judge Dee mysteries by himself, he began by translating an existing Chinese manuscript, Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee. I reviewed it on the podcast several years ago. It remains a favorite book. Here's the text of my original review, slightly edited (mostly for time references).

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Those of us who relish good, classic mysteries – and enjoy the occasional foray into exotic settings and historical mysteries – are fortunate to have more than a dozen books by Robert Van Gulik about the exploits of Judge Dee. Judge Dee was a real person who lived in seventh century China. For much of his early career, he was a district magistrate, the most powerful local official in early Chinese society, before moving on later in life to become a leading official at the imperial court. Van Gulik – an orientalist and Dutch diplomat – introduced many western readers to imperial China, with his original novels and short stories about Judge Dee. But he began in 1949 with a truly classic mystery – a Chinese detective story, written in the 18^th century, featuring Judge Dee, which Van Gulik translated for western readers. The book was called Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee.

The traditional Chinese detective story was different in many ways from the kind of mystery that those of us in the west enjoy. In his introduction to Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, Robert Van Gulik notes five primary characteristics that might surprise many readers. First, the criminal is generally revealed at the outset of the book, so that the reader is less concerned with the question of whodunit than how and why the detective catches the culprit. Second, there is often a supernatural element, with the detective aided by ghosts or dreams. Third, there is an excess of details and digressions. Fourth, there is an enormous population of characters. And fifth, there are incredibly detailed and gruesome descriptions of the criminal’s ultimate execution.

Van Gulik picked Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, written by an anonymous Chinese author in the 18^th century, to translate because most of these factors were far less prominent than they were in many other traditional novels. He did take some liberties in his translation, trying to make the book more palatable to western readers – and I think he succeeded admirably.

Judge Dee, as noted earlier, was a historical figure. In this book, he is the magistrate of the district of Chang-ping. The magistrate was the central local authority and civil official in any district, called “the father-and-mother figure” by the people, responsible for everything from maintaining land records to solving crimes. In Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, he is presented with three difficult crimes which must be solved, sometimes at considerable risk to himself. There is the murder of a silk trader, whose body is found lying by the side of a road. There is another murder in a nearby village, which proves both difficult and dangerous to solve. And there is the poisoning of a bride on her wedding night. While the cases are not related to each other, the judge must solve them all nearly simultaneously.

Van Gulik’s introduction provides a great deal of information about the Chinese justice system and how it worked, and the background information is invaluable in making the book readable and enjoyable. While there is a supernatural element involved in the plot, it is far less important in this novel (at least according to Van Gulik) than in many others, as the supernatural guidance tends merely to reinforce the judge’s own observations and deductions. Overall, the book provides a fascinating look inside another culture that few of us can really claim to know well. More to the point, it is an enjoyable mystery. It is fascinating to see how the judge reaches his conclusions and how he manages to solve the crimes and bring them home to the guilty. Van Gulik’s introduction and notes add considerable value to his translation. In those notes after the book, by the way, he observes:

I think that it might be an interesting experiment if one of our modern writers of detective stories would try his hand at composing an ancient Chinese detective story himself.

Apparently nobody took him up on his challenge – so Van Gulik himself went on to write 15 novels and a volume of short stories, all about Judge Dee, all put together along the lines of the Classic Chinese detective story. I find them thoroughly enjoyable, in no small measure for what they reveal about what was, to me, a little known or understood way of life. If you want to see how it all started, try Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, by Robert Van Gulik.

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

Next: The Case of the One-Eyed Witness, by Erle Stanley Gardner.

From the Vault: "Case for Three Detectives"

Those of us who enjoy mysteries in general and Golden Age mysteries in particular are all too familiar with this situation: A murder is committed. The police (or other official law enforcement agents) are stumped. Then along comes our protagonist hero, male or female, to show the police what really happened, and, more often than not, the protagonist succeeds where the official investigator fails. Oh well, it's all fiction - often very good fiction indeed, but still fiction. So it's pleasant, every once in a while, to meet a great detective - or several of them - who fall flat on their amateur faces, while the much-scorned official investigator walks away with the prize (or at least, arrests the evil killer).

Consider, if you will, Sergeant Beef, the beer-loving, darts-playing hero of Leo Bruce's 1936 classic Case for Three Detectives. The good sergeant is shunted to one side when three Great Detectives (the capitals, I think, are absolutely required) take over the investigation. And he stays on the sidelines as each of the three interlopers comes up with a brilliant solution to the case. Unfortunately, they can't all agree on a single solution...

Here's what I had to say about Case for Three Detectives on the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago, as always tweaked and polished a bit:

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A murder is committed in a locked room. Sounds like it could be a difficult case to solve. Not necessarily, though, when three of the best – and best-known – amateur private detectives arrive on the scene to take over from the hapless and helpless police. Should be no problem in such expert hands, right? Let’s find out – in Case for Three Detectives, by Leo Bruce.

Leo Bruce was the pen name of Rupert Croft-Cooke, the author of two series of detective stories. The first featured the work of a police detective, Sergeant Beef; the second series, written after the Sergeant Beef stories, concerned the amateur detective work of Carolus Deane. Today’s book, Case for Three Detectives, features Sergeant Beef – and, in fact, was the first of Bruce’s mysteries, published at the height of the Golden Age in 1936. And it is most unusual.

First of all, there’s the murder itself – the death of a woman in a room which is effectively sealed, the door not only locked but double-bolted. Yet the victim is found with throat cut – and no weapon in the room. There appears to be no way anyone could have escaped.

A baffling problem – perhaps. The case is turned over to Sergeant Beef, who is the local police detective on the spot. He is a fairly blunt, straightforward man. The guests at the English house party quite frankly doubt the good sergeant’s abilities. So when three famous amateur detectives show up on the doorstep offering to help, they are welcomed by everyone – with the possible exception of Sergeant Beef, who has been given orders to hold off on his own investigations until the three amateurs have had a chance to go at it.

And who are these three amateurs? They are likely to be familiar to mystery readers in everything but name.

First, there is Lord Simon Plimsoll, a fairly effete nobleman, with a fanatically-devoted manservant who provides him with photographs, clues, and regular swigs of Napoleon Brandy.

Then there is the very Gallic Monsieur Amer Picon, who utters cryptic remarks – half the time in French – while striking up  conversations with the key players in the drama to help him understand the character of the victim and suspects.

And finally, there is the nondescript little Catholic Priest, Monsignor Smith, much given to flights of philosophy and long clerical conversations.

If they sound like three very familiar characters…they should. Case for Three Detectives, in addition to being a fine locked-room mystery, is an excellent satire, using take-offs on Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and G. K. Chesteron’s Father Brown to poke some well-deserved fun at them and, even more significantly, at their methods of detection. For while the characters all contemptuously ignore or sideline Sergeant Beef, we are shown the three Great Detectives at work. And, curiously enough, as they wander through the book, asking questions, examining evidence, and following an entire sea’s worth of red herrings, the three great detectives put their extraordinary skills to work – and come up with three absolutely brilliant solutions.

The only problem, of course, being that they are all wrong.

And while Sergeant Beef is very impressed by their imaginative detective work, and admires the three detectives greatly, it is up to him to arrest the real criminal and explain how the murder really was committed inside that locked room. But then, as the good sergeant had been saying practically since the beginning of the book, "I know who done it."

Case for Three Detectives, by Leo Bruce, is one of the most unusual classic mysteries you’re ever likely to read. It is very funny – he has the mannerisms of the three detectives (and some of the identifying characteristics provided by their authors) very nicely defined. And it’s also a good, impossible crime story – and, in fact, ALL the solutions (including the correct one from Sergeant Beef) are likely to strike the reader as quite legitimate – if occasionally far-fetched. If you enjoy Sayers, Christie and Chesterton, you really should see how neatly they and their detectives are skewered in Case for Three Detectives.

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You can listen to the original podcast by clicking here.

 

"All But Impossible"

Dr. Sam Hawthorne may be a very good doctor indeed, but it's worth pointing out that he possesses an even more valuable skill: solving seemingly impossible mysteries. What kind of mysteries? Here are a few examples:

A murder takes place in an old-fashioned parlor in the victim’s house...and the parlor promptly disappears, leaving a dead body behind. Impossible?

A man who was alive and kicking one day earlier turns up dead the very next day inside a coffin that's been buried for 20 years. Impossible?

In a locked house, surrounded by a field of unmarked snow, the water in a stoneware jar miraculously turns into wine - poisoned wine. And somebody is killed. Impossible?

A man is shot at very close range while riding alone through the center of a covered bridge, with more than 200 people watching – but nobody saw anyone fire the shot. Impossible?

These are just a few of the latest escapades of Dr. Sam Hawthorne, the creation of prolific short-story writer Ed Hoch. Crippen & Landru publishers have been releasing Hoch's Dr. Sam stories, and they have now released the fourth volume of these stories about impossible crimes. This one is called All Things Impossible: The Impossible Files of Dr. Sam Hawthorne. 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.

The fifteen stories in All But Impossible all involve apparently impossible crimes – and how Dr. Sam uncovered the truth about them. Each case is unique – I am constantly amazed at how Ed Hoch was able to come up with so many different plots, so many ways to make the seemingly impossible happen, with few if any repeats. The stories contain the word “problem” in their titles, for that’s how Hoch – and Dr. Sam – approach them. In most of the stories, there is a murder. The local police chief is baffled. So is Dr. Sam, initially, but by studying the clues (which, of course, for the most part he’ll share with you) and talking to the people involved, he usually figures out the secret and solves the mystery.

I’m not going to go into more detail on the stories. It wouldn’t be fair to you. Do yourself a favor. Get a copy of All But Impossible. And get ready to be fooled by an expert.