Classic Mysteries

"The Lost Gallows"

Do you enjoy a great "impossible crime story? Love John Dickson Carr's books and stories? Is the name "Henri Bencolin" familiar to you?

A lot of people might answer "yes" to the first two questions and wind up scratching their heads at the third. Henri Bencolin was the name of the first series detective created by John Dickson Carr. His first published novel, It Walks By Night, which appeared in 1930, featured Bencolin (and was reviewed here late last year). Now, Carr's second novel about Bencolin, The Lost Gallows (1931) is being released during the first week of April. It's being re-published by Poisoned Pen Press as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, and the publisher has provided me with a copy for this review. It's the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to that complete review by clicking here.

The scene is set in London, on a foggy night. In the course of that terrifying night:

• Our detective, Henri Bencolin, and his friend Jeff Marle (who is also our narrator) are nearly run down in the busy streets of London by a limousine apparently being driven by a dead man whose throat has been cut;
• An apparently invisible joker keeps moving a small and rather gruesome toy – a model of a hangman’s gibbet - from place to place, and nobody can see who is doing it – or how;
• That murderer taunts the police – and his victims – by claiming as his own the name “Jack Ketch,” a name once used to hide the identity of a notorious English executioner of the seventeenth century;
• And this Jack Ketch advises police (and others) that he will hang his chosen (and kidnapped) victims on a gallows situated on "Ruination Street"…and that is, apparently, the one lost street that cannot be found on any map of London.

Bencolin is different from Carr's  better-known series detectives, Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale. All three specialize - as a general rule - in solving "impossible" crimes. Carr creates an eerie atmosphere of nightmare in almost all his books. But there is more relief to be found in the humor displayed in the Merrivale or Fell mysteries. Bencolin is more somber - and, perhaps, more terrifying. If you don't know Bencolin yet, this is a splendid opportunity to meet him.

From the Vault: "The Blind Barber"

The mystery which I want to share with you today on our "From the Vault" feature reminds me of a very old but still appropriate nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl and she had a little curl

right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good, she was very very good,

And when she was bad she was horrid - but remarkably interesting, all the same.

Which is my way of inviting you to read, or re-read, one of my favorite impossible crime detective stories by the great John Dickson Carr. The key words there are "impossible" and "detective." "Impossible," by the nature of the crime (murder on a luxury ocean liner - but the victim disappears and nobody is missing). "detective," because Carr's detective, Dr. Gideon Fell, sits in his living room in London, is told everything (and only things shared with the reader) about the crime - and solves the mystery without even leaving his armchair.

Yes, it's also "horrid" - but only if you believe that a great mystery cannot also be a hilariously funny farce. Murder is a terrible crime, but I suspect very few crimes of this nature happen in real life. And I'll stand by my diagnosis of "remarkably interesting." I'll explain more in this (lightly edited) transcript below of my Classic Mysteries audio review of Carr's 1934 classic, The Blind Barber. You have been warned...

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It was most certainly a memorable voyage. The commander of that noble passenger liner, the S. S. Queen Victoria, is highly unlikely to forget that particular Atlantic crossing. In fairness, Captain Sir Hector Whistler probably would prefer to forget it completely. For the high jinks aboard his great luxury liner were unlike any before or since. There was a fair amount of mayhem involved, and a lot of drinking…and also the theft of a fabulous jewel. And there was a bloody murder followed by an impossible disappearance. And the solution would come from a detective who wasn’t even on board the Queen Victoria (though he bitterly regretted having missed all the fun) – Dr. Gideon Fell. It all happens in The Blind Barber, by John Dickson Carr.

John Dickson Carr was – and remains, I think – the undisputed 20th century master of the impossible crime and locked room mystery genre – the crime that couldn’t have happened, yet did. In The Blind Barber, we have what I think is one of his most ingenious plots.

But...

The Blind Barber – first published in 1934, 87 years ago – is showing its age, frankly. It shows it mostly in a matter of attitude, but it’s hard to bring a 2021 point-of-view to that kind of 87-year-old humor.

So before we go any farther, let me list some of the things I really really like about The Blind Barber and also some of the things I don’t like as much.

I like the plot – a plot that is so complex that it’s hard to summarize here without totally confusing you – or confusing me, for that matter. Among its elements, it has to do with some stolen movie film that could prove very embarrassing to people in very high places, a stolen emerald elephant, and a bloody shipboard murder with a victim who vanishes.

I like the fact that it is a pure armchair detective story. Carr’s detective, Dr. Gideon Fell, quite literally sits in his armchair in his London rooms and is told the story of what happened on board the ship by one of the participants – and Dr. Fell solves the mystery without ever setting foot out of his rooms.

I like the fact that it is a comedy. In fact, it is a farce. As critic Anthony Boucher observed in his introduction to the 1962 Collier paperback edition sitting on my bookshelf, "this book is a farce about murder."

I like the four main characters involved in the strange events on board the S. S. Victoria – the people who are responsible for so much of the slapstick that surrounds this mystery and who somehow manage repeatedly to assault the dignified captain of the ship with everything from fists to bug spray.

What I do NOT like is some of the attitude.

Given the rather brutal nature of the murder in the book – and of the murderer, for that matter – some of the laughter rings kind of hollow to me.

I do NOT like the fact that so much of the humor is based on the idea that drinking to excess is inherently funny.

I do NOT like the fact that some of the humor is based on ethnic stereotyping. Note that this is ethnic, not racial, but – in 2021 – it feels more than a little awkward.

And now that I’ve listed all that for you, let me say only that I still think the plot of the book is brilliant and a lot of the humor really is funny, in a “three stooges” kind of way.

Oh – you want to know what happens? Well, as I said, the plot involves all sorts of complications. To repeat, paraphrasing the blurb of that 1962 Collier edition, there’s a reel of compromising film, an emerald elephant, and a lethal razor for props, murder as the evil deed, and unmitigated mayhem as the comedy relief. And there’s also the question of how to arrange for a disappearance at sea – when nobody is missing from the ship. When the ship reaches London, one of our central characters goes to visit Dr. Fell and lays the case out before him – and Dr. Fell is able to explain what really happened. And, in that Collier edition – I don’t know if it’s available in the newer e-book version – when Dr. Fell offers his explanation at the end of the book, the reader is given footnotes which contain the number of the page on which that clue had been given to you. Enjoy a good game of matching wits with the author and his detective? The Blind Barber is a great choice for you.

To quote Anthony Boucher again, he wrote in his introduction:

“Unlike almost all other comedies of terrors, The Blind Barber is a detective story, in the strictest sense. But never was a reader more bedeviled with distractions from detection. Who observes clues while he’s wiping his laughter-streaming eyes? I hope you enjoy the challenge…and the fun.

And I think that pretty well sums up The Blind Barber, by John Dickson Carr. And I really do hope I haven’t dissuaded you from giving the book a try. It’s available now in an e-book edition from Open Road Media. If you can overlook its flaws – mostly, as I say, the result of 1930s attitudes being viewed through 21^st century eyes – I really do think you’ll enjoy the mystery – and you’ll be astounded by the solution.

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

Next: Look to the Lady, by Margery Allingham.

"It Walks By Night"

There is something inherently terrifying about the so-called "impossible" crime - that mystery sub-genre which, during most of the 20th century, was dominated by the great author, John Dickson Carr. Most of his books dealt with one of two English detectives, either Dr. Gideon Fell or Sir Henry Merrivale. But before either of those characters was invented by Carr, he had another protagonist who solved the same kind of mysteries. His name was Henri Bencolin, a French police investigator. Bencolin turned in quite a performance in It Walks By Night (1930). That book is the subject of my audio review this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you are welcome to listen to the complete review by clicking here.

It Walks By Night is narrated by a young American named Jeff Marle. Jeff is a friend of Bencolin, who is in Paris, visiting the detective.

I had come up from Nice in response to a wire from Bencolin saying merely that there was danger ahead and was I interested? – to which I wired back “Yes,” without knowing what he meant. As yet I knew nothing about the man who was to murder the Duc de Saligny and to walk through our dreams with his sly and grisly smile.

The man being pursued by Bencolin is Alexandre Laurent. Shortly after Laurent’s marriage, he tried to murder his wife. He was committed to an asylum for the criminally insane. He has now escaped from that asylum, committing some gruesome murders along the way. His now-former wife  is about to marry a nobleman, the Duc de Saligny – and Laurent has threatened to murder the Duc in such a way that it will appear to have been impossible.

And that evening, as Bencolin and Jeff Marle watch the door of a room in a Parisian salon into which the Duc has entered…there is a murder in that room…but when the locked door is broken open, the only person in the room is the victim – who has been beheaded. There is no sign of Laurent – or anyone else, for that matter. Only the victim's body is there..

Here is how Bencolin sums up the situation:

“In short, there are no secret entrances; the murderer was not hiding anywhere in the room; he did not go out by the window, he did not go out the salon door under my watching nor the hall door…but he was not there when we entered. Yet a murderer had beheaded his victim there; we know in this case above all others that the dead man did not kill himself.”

And as later events proved, Bencolin spoke the absolute truth.

The Italics are the author's. If you're looking for impossibilities, you have just been challenged.

: It Walks By Night is currently available as an entry in the British Library Crime Classics series (though Carr was an American writer).It boasts an excellent introduction to Carr and to Bencolin by mystery historian and author Martin Edwards. You’ll also find a very rare short story which featured the first appearance of Bencolin. The story is called “The Shadow of the Goat,” originally published anonymously in 1926 – four years before It Walks By Night – in a publication at Haverford University, where John Dickson Carr was a student. It Walks By Night is a worthy addition to your collection.

"The Three Taps"

The name of the insurance company was "The Indescribable Insurance Company." The insurance policy of which they were quite justifiably proud was something called "the Euthanasia policy," which was a most generous policy indeed. If the policy holder who bought the Euthanasia policy, and paid its remarkably high premiums, were to die before his 65th birthday, the company would pay a very generous sum to the dead man's heirs. If he survived until after that birthday, then the policy holder himself would begin receiving a generous annuity for the rest of his life. There was only one way that fortunate policy holder could lose and that was by committing suicide, for the Indescribable Company would not pay a suicide or his heirs.

All of which explains why the death of a man named Jephthah Mottram set off something of a scramble to determine whether he had killed himself (by turning on the gas at the tap in the hotel bedroom where he died, the room being securely locked on the inside) or had killed himself (in which case, why were all the gas taps found to be turned off when they broke into the dead man's room?) The Indescribable Insurance Company sent its top investigator, Miles Bredon to try to figure out whether Mottram was a suicide or a murder victim - and whether the company should pay Mottram's heirs or refuse any payment at all. That's the mystery at the heart of an excellent Golden Age mystery by Ronald A. Knox called The Three Taps, first published in 1927. It's the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you are welcome to listen to the complete review by clicking here. In June, The Merion Press, a small American publisher, brought Ronald A. Knox’s Golden Age mystery The Three Taps back into print, and the publisher has sent me a copy for this review.

Ronald Knox was one of the most prominent British detective story authors in the early years of the Golden Age. He was an English cleric, having been ordained in the English church in 1911 and then converted to Roman Catholicism in 1917. Most of his mysteries featured, as their series detective, Miles Bredon, first introduced in The Three Taps. Father Knox is also remembered for the guidelines he published for mystery authors, a document Knox called his Ten Commandments for detective fiction. He was also one of the founders of Britain’s prestigious Detection Club. As a mystery author, Knox was a firm believer in the concept of “fair play.” He called for authors to give readers the clues they would need to determine the correct solution to a given mystery – clues that, quite naturally, would be well hidden by clever misdirection. Readers will find that in The Three Taps. For fans who enjoy Golden Age plotting in their mysteries, The Three Taps deserves a place on your reading lists.

"The Night of the Wolf"

If you enjoy "impossible crime" and "locked room" mysteries as much as I do, you really need to be aware of a modern French author named Paul Halter. He's still writing, with dozens of books and stories to his credit, and some of his best material is being translated into English for the pleasure of those like me, whose French language capabilities were at their best back when I was in high school and college. Don't ask when.

What kind of stories? 

What would you say to a murder committed by a snowman – a real snowman -  before witnesses?

Or evidence that skeletons inside a sealed mausoleum must have been dancing all by themselves – and were pretty noisy about it, too?

How about a touching tale featuring a visit from Father Christmas, sleigh tracks which begin and end in a field of unbroken snow…and sudden death?

Ten stories in all, stories which might leave you believing in miracles…or perhaps in the cleverness and ingenuity of an author who can take you inside those miracles and reveal their secrets. Ten of Halter's stories have been collected into a book called The Night of the Wolf. translated from the original French by John Pugmire and Robert Adey. The book is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you are welcome to listen to the complete review by clicking here.

It has always seemed to me that there were two requirements for a really enjoyable mystery of the “impossible crime” variety. First, the “impossible” attribute must be carefully designed and set up by the author. There has to be a reason why sleigh tracks appear to start and end in an unbroken field of snow, for example, by which I mean a reason why the criminal HAD to set up the seeming impossibility. Paul Halter, a very prolific writer, has a knack for developing such plots. But plot alone isn’t enough: the second necessary attribute is the author’s ability to create an atmosphere of real terror. The reader should have the impression that supernatural forces may be at work – until, usually right at the last moment, the author explains the true, non-supernatural, way in which the supposed impossibility was worked.

It’s a gift that Paul Halter clearly has and uses. You’ll find both of those gifts on display in Night of the Wolf.

 

From the Vault: "Fatal Descent"

The book I've chosen to bring back from the Classic Mysteries vault today is an interesting mix of "twofers" - that is, two-for-the-price-of-one features. Consider: The book is called Fatal Descent, but it was first published in the U.K. as Drop to His Death. That's two titles. There are two authors for this 1939 locked-room classic: John Dickson Carr (writing as Carter Dickson) and Cecil Street (writing as John Rhode), so each of our two authors has at least two familiar pen names (Street also wrote as Miles Burton.). And the crimes in Fatal Descent are investigated by two investigators, Police Surgeon Dr. Horatio Glass and Chief Inspector David Hornbeam. And, unfortunately, in my opinion, Carr and Street wrote only this one novel as a collaboration by two first rate authors. John Dickson Carr was the acknowledged master of the locked room/impossible crime mystery. Cecil Street also wrote many impossible crime novels. I recorded this review of Fatal Descent for the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago. As always, some minor tweaking has been done.

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The facts of the case were quite clear. Sir Ernest had gotten into his private elevator on the fifth floor. He was alone. The elevator went down to the first floor without stopping. When it reached the first floor, and the door was opened, Sir Ernest was sitting inside the private elevator car, having been shot through the heart. But there was no weapon in the car or in the elevator shaft. And there was no way anyone could have had access to the elevator as it descended. It was quite clearly impossible – but there was the body of Sir Ernest to prove that it had happened. It would be up to Chief Inspector David Hornbeam and Police Surgeon Dr. Horatio Glass to figure out not only whodunit but also why – and, to be sure, the overwhelming question appeared to be “how.” It happens in Fatal Descent, by John Rhode and Carter Dickson.

John Rhode was one of the pen names used by the amazingly prolific Cecil John Charles Street – an author whose name is virtually unknown to most readers today. Many of his books, especially those written as John Rhode, featured so-called impossible crime and locked room situations.

Carter Dickson was the pen name used by John Dickson Carr, still considered by many – myself included – to be the 20th-century master of the impossible crime mystery.

Carr and Street…(Dickson and Rhode)…were friends, but they only worked together on a single novel – Fatal Descent, first published in 1939 with the title Drop to His Death. It is fast, suspenseful, funny in places – and quite ingenious.

Sir Ernest Tallant is the head of a large publishing house that bears his name. It produces all kinds of fiction, several magazines, and – on the non-fiction side – Tallant’s Golden Keys to Religion and Tallant’s Golden Keys to Education. Tallant’s name – and personality – are emblazoned on the building which bears his company’s name in giant neon letters.

Sir Ernest, from what we can tell when we meet him, is an autocrat, quite used to having his own way in all things. His business practices may be somewhat questionable, but in his company his own passions and beliefs will always rule.

Apparently that would include his opposition to a proposed match between his daughter Patricia Tallant – the keeper of those “golden keys” – and Bill Lester, overseer of Tallant’s Death Circle of Detective Novels – aren’t those great names for the company divisions?

Sir Ernest has managed to create quite a web of hard feelings among his subordinates. So when the company is hit by a wave of rather peculiar small thefts – a desk clock, a model airplane, that sort of thing – oh yes, and a fully loaded 45-caliber revolver – Tallant sends for Chief Inspector Hornbeam and makes it quite clear and quite public that he knows who has been stealing things – and why.

Hornbeam initially sends his friend, police surgeon Dr. Horatio Glass, to talk to Tallant. Glass, however, arrives at the company’s headquarters just in time for the blow to fall. Sir Ernest gets in his own private elevator on the top floor of the building. It is a closed cage. There is no way to open any of the doors on any floor while the elevator is moving. And as the elevator moves down, Dr. Glass – and others – are able to see through the screened glass doors from their vantage point on the upper floors of the building that Sir Ernest is alone in the car.

The car descends all the way to the ground floor – with Dr. Glass among the witnesses ready to swear that it never stopped anywhere along the way. But before the elevator reaches the ground floor, everyone hears a gunshot. When the elevator stops at the ground floor, the lobby attendant walks over and opens the door and finds Sir Ernest sitting on the floor of the elevator, quite dead, having been shot through the heart, the bullet apparently crashing through the skylight of the elevator. There is no gun.

The doctor says Sir Ernest must have been shot from one of the doorways to the elevator shaft, after the elevator passed downward. But that proves to be impossible – there is no way anyone could have opened a door or had access to the shaft while the elevator was moving. Which it was. And there does not appear to be any way that a gun could have been rigged, say, in the elevator shaft – for there is no gun to be found anywhere.

That’s the situation confronting Chief Inspector Hornbeam and Dr. Glass. While there would seem to be a limited number of suspects, it appears impossible that any of them could have carried out the murder. For that matter, it appears as if the crime couldn’t possibly have happened.

But, of course, it did. And Dr. Glass and Inspector Hornbeam, two old friends who argue repeatedly over their theories, are going to have to unite their forces to get at the truth in this excellent variation on the locked-room mystery.

It’s a fine story, written with wit and good humor, quite fairly clued for the reader who can find the hints, and with some first-rate characters. It’s a pity that Rhode and Carr only wrote this one mystery together. Readers who enjoy a good impossible crime story really should read “Fatal Descent.” It’s been out of print for a while, but there is now an e-book edition available. I think you would enjoy it.

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You can listen to the recorded audio review by clicking here

Next: The Final Deduction, by Rex Stout

 

From the Vault: "No Coffin for the Corpse"

There's an old English music hall song by Will E. Haines, made popular (I think) by the late Gracie Fields, called "He's Dead but He Won't Lie Down!" I came across a YouTube video of her singing the song in a 1932 movie called Looking on the Bright Side. It came to my mind the other day when I was looking for something to bring you all from the Classic Mysteries vault this week. It reminded me, in fact, of a very fine example of an impossible murder story called No Coffin for the Corpse, a 1942 book by stage magician (and co-founder of the Mystery Writers of America) Clayton Rawson. It's about...well, I suppose, someone who's dead but won't lie down. I did an audio review of it several years back on the Classic Mysteries podcast. Here's a transcript of what I had to say about it - as usual, some light editing has been done:

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Regular visitors to this podcast know that I really love a good impossible crime mystery. Give me a locked room, a situation where a murder couldn’t possibly have happened – yet did – and I’m pretty well hooked. So let me present another example of the impossible crime. Here’s a man, a would-be blackmailer, killed before witnesses – but the man who did the killing won’t call police. And because he is very rich and very powerful, the witnesses help the man bury his victim in a nearby cemetery. And that’s when the real fun starts: for it appears that the victim isn’t going to lie peacefully in his grave. Ghosts appear and disappear and even turn up in photographs. Witnesses can swear that they saw a ghost toss valuable vases around when nobody is near enough to touch them. And there is, ultimately, a murder, which – by all appearances – must have been committed by the ghost, who then, again according to witnesses, must have managed to get out of a locked and bolted room, perhaps by walking through walls. It certainly didn’t make the police officer in charge, Lieutenant Flint, very happy. So it was up to a professional magician – the Great Merlini – to figure out the truth about what happened – and, most importantly, how. And there in a nutshell you have No Coffin for the Corpse, by Clayton Rawson.

Rawson was one of the four founding members of the Mystery Writers of America. He was also a professional magician, an illusionist, and he put a lot of his knowledge about the tricks of the magic trade into his four novels about a magician named The Great Merlini. The last of those four – and arguably the best of them– was No Coffin for the Corpse, which was published in 1942. It has a delicious plot, with plenty of apparent impossibilities for the reader to figure out.

The story is told primarily through the eyes of Ross Harte, a young journalist who has written a series of newspaper articles about the apparent wrongdoing of Dudley Wolff, the hot-tempered owner of a munitions factory. This was hardly likely to make Wolff harbor friendly feelings towards the journalist. And when Ross Harte proceeded to fall in love with Wolff’s daughter, predictable fireworks erupted, which ended with Harte being quite firmly made unwelcome at the Wolff estate.

What Harte doesn’t know – and the reader is given an advantage over the narrator here – is that on the same night the journalist was kicked off the estate, someone appeared at Wolff’s mansion and tried to blackmail the industrialist. Quite predictably, Wolff punched the would be blackmailer – who fell to the floor, hitting his head. A doctor on the scene pronounced him dead.

But rather than calling the police – which would have meant publicity that Wolff felt he could ill afford – the magnate insisted on forcing his aides and associates to take the body of the would-be blackmailer to a nearby disused cemetery – and bury it there.

In the meantime, Ross Harte has dropped in on his old friend, the magician known as the Great Merlini, who is putting together a new show. I won’t try to follow all the twists in the plot at this point, but suffice to say that Merlini and Harte wind up out at the Wolff estate – where they find the industrialist clearly upset and frightened. He, and members of his family, have been seeing a ghost – a ghost whom Wolff recognizes as the man he killed – who has apparently been materializing in spite of the sophisticated alarm system in the heavily secured house. Wolff’s daughter, one of the witnesses, remembers it this way:

“It stood there looking down at us, watching very quietly as if it had been there for a long time. I cried out, I think, and Father, who had been examining the torn pages, dropped them. He stood in front of me and I saw his face as he turned. It was as if something had struck him a violent physical blow…

“And then, quickly, the figure moved. The upper hall, even in the daytime, is shadowy and dark. It seemed to melt back into it. And, just as it vanished, the doorbell rang.”

A terrifying image, to be sure. And that ghost appears to have the power to cause unexplainable phenomena – such as a vase tipping and falling and breaking when nobody is near it (and, no, nobody has used a black thread to tip it over). The ghost even shows up in a photo = with the background behind the ghost clearly visible through the image of the ghost itself.

And just when things become extremely complicated…there is a murder. And, for that matter, our narrator Ross Harte is nearly murdered. And the circumstances are such that it certainly appears a ghost must have been responsible, because it somehow managed to shoot its victim in front of witnesses and then disappear out of a locked room.

Still with me? It will get more complicated. As Harte tells us,

“What we all needed at that moment more than anything else was a week or two in bed in a quiet secluded sanitarium with no visitors allowed.”

The police, of course, having finally been called in to deal with the murder, are not at all happy when they learn about that earlier death. Poor Lieutenant Flint winds up suspecting just about everyone in turn. It is only when Merlini is able to explain who the ghost really is…and how it got in and out of those locked rooms…that the nightmare is resolved. And be advised that there are so many twists, plots and counter-plots that the reader is likely to reach the ending feeling somewhat dazed.

A good impossible crime story relies heavily on misdirection, just as the stage act of a great illusionist uses the same techniques. That’s one reason why I enjoy the character of Merlini and the writing of Rawson. Happily, the Mysterious Press is now offering all of Rawson’s books in ebook formats [Ed.Note: Still available as of 3/27/2020], so they are once again available to mystery lovers. I was certainly aware that I was being led down the wrong path several times in this book – but I still wound up being surprised by some of the final twists of the story. Clayton Rawson’s No Coffin for the Corpse is a very good, solid impossible crime mystery which will provide readers with some assurance that, in the end, nothing is impossible.

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

Next: Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L. Sayers.

"Puzzle for Players"

People who work in the theater have a reputation for being a superstitious lot. From the stars of a long-running play down to the stagehands who work behind the scenes, it's easy to find people who live by a set of theatrical superstitions about good - and bad - luck. Some examples: never wish a performer "good luck" - instead, invite him or her to "break a leg." Never refer to Shakespeare's Macbeth by its title - call it "The Scottish Play" instead. Several Broadway theaters are said to be haunted; Wikipedia cites several people who claim to have seen ghosts in those theaters.

These real-world superstitions and many others may be found as well in the world of mystery fiction set in theaters, where superstitions can have dangerous, even disastrous outcomes. Sometimes, they can even lead to murder. It certainly appears as if that's what's going on in Patrick Quentin's Puzzle for Players. That 1938 mystery is the subject of my audio review this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you are welcome to listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Puzzle for Players follows Peter Duluth, a New York City theater producer and recovering alcoholic, only recently discharged from the private psychiatric hospital where he was being treated for his addiction. He has gathered a cast of actors and actresses to prepare and open a new play called Troubled Waters, a production he is convinced will be the smash hit of the current Broadway season. Unfortunately for several members of the cast and crew – including Peter Duluth himself – he finds that the theater he thought was going to be home to the play is not, in fact, the theater he will be using. Instead, he finds himself stuck with a rundown New York theater named the Dagonet. Duluth and the cast are very reluctant to rehearse in, and eventually open in, the Dagonet. It’s an old theater, in pretty bad condition, with plenty of rats apparently living in the cellar under the stage. The cast have barely begun rehearsing there when someone is, quite literally, frightened to death. But it isn’t until there is another death (in what looks like a peculiar production accident) that Peter Duluth realizes that someone appears to be trying to block his show from opening. More unpleasant and unexplained events begin to happen; there are deaths which are quite clearly murders. And with each incident, Duluth finds it getting harder and harder to un-scramble the pieces of this Puzzle for Players.

“Patrick Quentin” was a pen name shared by several mystery writers, usually working in collaboration with one or more members of the same group. The mysteries featuring Peter Duluth were written by Hugh C. Wheeler and Richard Wilson Webb, using the name “Patrick Quentin.” I think you'll really enjoy Puzzle for Players.

From the Vault: "The Case of the Gilded Fly"

My selection from the vault this week is the mystery which marked the first appearance of Oxford University English Professor Gervase Fen. He's the creation of Edmund Crispin, the pen name for Robert Bruce Montgomery. If Fen is involved in a case, you may be reasonably sure that the plot will be clever and concise, with features that may turn it into an "impossible" crime situation. You may also be sure of witty and quite funny scenes, often juxtaposed with unexpected touches of grim, almost noir-ish detail. The book is The Case of the Gilded Fly, first published in 1944, and while it's not Crispin's best work (in my opinion, anyway), it's still awfully good. Here's the script of the audio review I did for this book on the Classic Mysteries podcast several years ago, suitably edited:

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It appeared pretty obvious to the police that the victim had committed suicide. The nature of the gunshot wound, evidently fired at pointblank range; the fact that there was no way a killer could possibly have gotten in or out of the room without being seen – these pretty well seemed to indicate suicide. But Gervase Fen, professor of English at Oxford University, certainly was not convinced. He declared that it was murder – and, what’s more, insisted that he could name the murderer. While this did not particularly endear him to the police, it certainly makes an interesting debut for one of my favorite detectives, Gervase Fen, in The Case of the Gilded Fly, by Edmund Crispin.

Writing as Edmund Crispin, Robert Bruce Montgomery wrote just nine novels and two short story collections – a very small output, most of it written between 1944 and 1953. Yet I find Crispin’s books to be memorable – more so than the more numerous contributions of other authors. Crispin’s sense of humor, his plots and – above all – the character of his detective, Oxford University Professor Gervase Fen, make Crispin’s books a treat.

The Case of the Gilded Fly, first published in 1944, is the book which introduced Fen – and Crispin – to the world. Crispin does quite a bit of showing off here; there’s a bit of an atmosphere of “I’m clever and I don’t care who knows it,” but I don’t think it’s intrusive.

The book begins with a prologue which looks at eleven individuals traveling to Oxford by train. We are introduced to each of these characters, all traveling, as Crispin notes, at different times and for different purposes and we probe a bit to learn who they are. Crispin, after introducing them to us, gets them all to Oxford and allows them to disperse to their various destinations. And, in the concluding sentence of this prologue, Crispin tells us – "within the week that followed, three of these eleven died by violence."

That is typical of Crispin. His writing disarms the reader, providing humor – sometimes gentle, sometimes not so; he creates excellent characters and sets his scenes. And then, when the reader may not be expecting it, he drops in a one-liner like that which makes us sit up and pay attention.

Having set the scene, Crispin gets the plot moving; most of the people we have met are involved in the production of a new play by the Oxford Repertory Theatre. We are given a variety of characters – the playwright; his long-time mistress, who is a well-known London actress; another actress, who is a particularly nasty individual detested by just about everyone; and one of the repertory theatre’s producers. There are other characters as well – not least among them Professor Fen, who has managed to get himself something of a reputation for solving complex mysteries. When we meet Fen on that train ride to Oxford, we are told:

"He wondered if he would be allowed to investigate another murder, supposing one occurred. Later he recalled this wish without satisfaction, since it was to be granted in that heavily ironic fashion which the gods appear to consider amusing."

As you would expect, that murder is not long in happening. The victim apparently has been shot at point-blank range, with the gun conveniently lying next to the body. But it appears that nobody else could have been in the room at the time – there are independent witnesses to this – so it must have been suicide. Only Fen demonstrates quite clearly that it could NOT have been suicide…a fact which tends to displease the local police.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot, except to note that there will be more deaths (as we were promised in the prologue), and that it will be up to Fen to figure out what really happened.

All of this is leavened by Crispin’s writing style and humor – although there are some nicely bizarre touches. Fen has a tendency to refer to other fictional detectives as if they were real people. He also tends to quote freely, making references to literature, opera, even art, and he seems to take it for granted that his readers will be able to follow along. I confess freely that I can’t always do so; it’s a potential irritant, although a familiar one, if you have read Michael Innes or some of Dorothy L. Sayers. Overall, though, it’s mostly a great deal of fun. Crispin is showing off his writing style, and he does so very effectively.

In a foreword written for the edition of The Case of the Gilded Fly which sits on my bookshelves, crime fiction historian Douglas G. Greene writes of what he calls:

[Crispin’s] “'depth of frivolity' that sometimes produced scenes of gentle wit in his novels and sometimes broad farce, but always with a sharpness of observation of human foibles. His stories are filled with touches of fantastic imagination, eccentric but believable characters, and well-constructed detective plots with all the clues laid fairly before the reader.

I agree with Greene. If you haven’t met Gervase Fen – or Edmund Crispin – try The Case of the Gilded Fly. [Ed. note: the edition discussed above does not appear to be available, but the book IS still available both in paper and in e-book versions, according to Amazon. As always, please check first with your own preferred bookseller for help in finding it.

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

Next: Average Jones, by Samuel Hopkins Adams.]

 

"Death in Captivity"

Death in Captivity (1952) is a fascinating book, set in an Italian Prisoner of War camp during World War II. The author, Michael Gilbert, deftly juggles two major interconnecting mystery types. It is a wartime-escape story, with the Allied officer-prisoners working feverishly on a tunnel that they hoped would allow them to escape from the camp, Campo 127, and begin a long, nightmarish trek across much of Italy in an effort to rejoin the Allied armies on their invasion of Italy. And it is also an impossible murder story. Death in Captivity is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

The murdered man,  a Greek soldier named Cyriakos Coutoules, was widely suspected by the other Allied officers to have been a spy for the Italian guards at Campo 127. The body was discovered by the escape team digging out that tunnel. The tunnel, while under construction, was barely wide enough to allow one individual to dig his way through the sand and other obstacles he might encounter. Coutoules had been suffocated, but access to the tunnel where he died required four strong men to open and close the entrance way. There was no way someone could have gotten into the tunnel to kill Coutoules or to put the body there to be found. And yet it had happened. And when the Italian officer in charge of the camp decided to arrest one of the Allied officers and charge him with the murder ,it was quite evident that the officers would have to solve the murder themselves – and quickly – if they were to protect the wrongly-accused man and also preserve the secret of the tunnel on which they had based all their plans for escape.

It’s a harrowing story – and it’s worth noting that the author, Michael Gilbert, was himself a prisoner of war in just such a camp and took part in several escape attempts.  Despite the grim wartime background and the brutality inherent in war itself, Death in Captivity nevertheless is filled with flashes of wit and even humor that manage to ease the tension somewhat – only to have that tension ratcheted up again by a master storyteller.

Death in Captivity is a powerful and moving book. It will be republished early in May as another in the British Library Crime Classics series which are published in the U.S. by Poisoned Pen Press. (It's already available on Kindle.) This edition features an introduction by mystery historian Martin Edwards, who calls the book "one of the finest achievements of a crime writer of distinction." I’d have to agree, and I recommend it very strongly indeed.