FFB: Withered Murder - Anthony & Peter Shaffer

THE STORY: The guests at "The Barnacle," a cozy retreat situated on an island near the Cornish coast, have just returned from watching a rather inept production of Macbeth performed by the local drama society. Everyone is ready for a very late night supper. Some retire to their rooms to freshen up, some remain in the living area, while the rest prepare the dining room for the meal. Everyone gathers together, lights are dimmed, candles are lit for atmosphere and then -- Reverend Radley stumbles in the dark, cries out and faints. When the others come to see what the disturbance is they find the body of Celia Whitley horribly murdered. Who killed her and -- more importantly -- how was it accomplished when her secretary had been writing letters at a table only a few feet from where the body was discovered? Mr. Fathom takes charge, puts the fear of God into all nine suspects, and solves the baffling murder in a short six hours.

THE CHARACTERS: The strangest thing about this detective novel is the detective himself. In the UK editions he is called Mr. Verity while in the US editions he is renamed Mr. Fathom. Why, I have no idea. But the editors did a sloppy job of the renaming. Fathom's original name pops up as Verity twice in my edition of Withered Murder which was published the US in 1956.  Made me scratch my head and pause when it happened the first time and then I had to read about the switch in Hubin as well as an online article about the books.

Whether known as Fathom or Verity (I'll stick with Fathom since that's how I got to know him) he's a blustery wonderful incarnation of the detective as demi-god. Clearly inspired by Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, Fathom is a large man of imposing physique with white hair, a dark haired Van Dyke beard, and a loud voice. Like Fell and H.M. it is his manner, speech and approach to crime solving that make him so notable. Fathom has a habit of indulging in grandiloquent speech making and opinionated rants. Insults are frequent during the many interrogation scenes leaving some of his targeted suspects speechless while reducing others to tears.

If the murder victim -- a vain, controlling, predatory former actress -- is painted as a loathsome woman, hated and reviled by everyone, the suspects are not portrayed any better. From the sanctimonious Rev. Radley to the egotistical and temperamental painter Terence Germayne, from curmudgeon of an antiquarian Meredith Blaire to religious hypocrite Mary Arundel there are not many likeable souls to care about. But this is exactly the point; it's a brilliant satire of the English manor house mystery. Every archetype one can imagine is present down to stereotypical gossipy maids who provide Fathom with some subtle clues just as in an Agatha Christie mystery. The whole thing smacks of a tongue-in-cheek homage to the traditional British detective novel. We have a baroquely described setting (the hotel is a converted monastery, once the home to a defunct order of fishermen monks known as the Piscatines) entirely suitable for gruesome murder, an evening out to see one of Shakespeare's most bloody and eerie plays, and a set up for a prime motive for Celia Whitey's long overdue death.

Beleaguered Hilary Stanton, Celia Whitely's secretary/companion, is eager to finish up her last duties with her employer and fly off to India to marry her fiance David, a soldier stationed there. But she is being prevented from leaving Celia's service. Hilary's ex-husband, Germayne, and her close friend Colin Grey are incensed. They even toy with the idea of doing Celia harm so Hilary can be free of the controlling woman who seems to want to possess the girl.

INNOVATIONS: The narrative voice is a cruel one -- patronizing, judgmental and quite often sneering in contempt. No one comes off in a good light least of all the god-like Mr. Fathom, the most judgemental character of the lot. Fathom's speech is not only grandiloquent, intended to highlight the book's most melodramatic moments, it is chastising, admonishing, and powerfully accusatory. He stands as the embodiment of Justice and Divine Retribution. Many of his amazingly constructed pronouncements are so dramatic they beg to be read aloud by a stentorian voiced actor. The theatricality of the novel is one of its greatest appeals. Ultimately the intricacy of stage work, illusions and misdirection, and the entire artifice of theater itself will prove to be the greatest inspirations to Fathom and will provide him with the glue that holds together the solution of the two puzzling deaths.

Fathom alludes to several of his previous cases throughout the novel and here the Shaffers get to indulge in their macabre sense of humor and -- I'm guessing mostly Anthony, the real mystery fan of the two -- draw on bizarre details as might be found in the work of John Dickson Carr and Anthony Boucher. One allusion is to a Scottish murderer who incinerated his children on a Yule log then scraped up the ashes and dumped them in his wife's Christmas stocking. Then there is Fathom's mini lecture about Bongo Bey (the Anatolian Slicer) which must be read in its entirety to be appreciated:

It was the most remarkable triumph. Bongo's mistake, you see, lay in slicing the wrong man. He had meant to kill Hussein the Hairy... Instead, however, he shredded a camel-breeder from Baku who was hiding from his creditors behind a knitted beard whose stitches ran at the wrong moment. This was all revealed by the forty-page codicil to his will, found subsequently by myself under the turban of his son-in-law, a fig merchant.

Though rife with allusions to bizarre cases and direct references to detective novel fiction and techniques there is, sad to say, not much fair play detection on display. Fathom makes pronouncements of the vital clues as part of his accusatory approach in the interrogation scenes. However, we never see him gather this evidence. The few fair play moments that might lead the reader to the truly unexpected solution are so subtle they are almost invisible. Unlike the way most veteran mystery writers disguise the most blatant clues as what might otherwise be thought of as minutiae, the Shaffers present the important clues in some of the most bizarre incidents in the book. Only in retrospect does it dawn on the reader that they were as obvious as the location of Poe's purloined letter. For instance, shortly before the body is discovered a cat viciously kills a rat in the presence of nearly every guest just as they are about to eat supper. Later, Fathom asks everyone about the rat's slaughter, where they were when it happened, how they reacted. No one can understand why he thinks it is so important. But it is. Similarly, Fathom asks the hotel owner to carry a chair from her bedroom around to the outside of the house and place it just inside the French doors of the room where the body was found. She's irritated by his bossiness as he tells he to move faster all while timing her speed with his watch. She does as he asks begrudgingly but is completely at a loss as to what it all means to him. The clueing turns out to be blatant in both of these cases and yet requires out-of-the-box thinking to apply them to the solution of the mysteries.

QUOTES: "I see before me that mutilated face, professor. I see beyond it to a filthy terror. I do not in any way wish to indulge in macabre hyperbole, but when so much combines in one spot I feel a sense of doom. Doom as the ancients saw it, as we two perhaps saw it from the beginning."

"A very creditable performance though I have never fully understood why the Bard is invariably made the butt of School Certificate examination. I suppose it must be done on the inoculation theory--inject enough of the stuff at birth and a lasting immunity will result."

Peter Shaffer (circa late 1960s)

"It simply amazes me how little developed people's sense of tragedy is. A sense of balance, amazing eyesight, splendid palates, all this they have, but nary a sense of doom. Can't you feel it all about you?"

"This is not the police, stupid man. It is Fathom. Your innocence of this crime, if indeed you are innocent, would still hang round your lean neck like a halter. Like a bracelet of unrealised intentions. It is what you have in common with your fellow guests, Mr. Radley: the depravity of the things you haven't committed."

"A woman like Miss Stanton marries a man because she finds him intriguing and sexually appealing. She really doesn't care a fig whether he paints like Leonardo or Joe Louis. There are very few women to whom a superb canvas is more important than a pair of meaty male thighs and the Cooperative Society bill settled regularly every Saturday morning. It is my opinion that all three functions were beyond you and she did the only thing sensible in rejecting you."

"Two and two make four. What do Collective Implication and Collective Ignorance make?"
"How the devil should I know?"
"How indeed?" agreed Fathom, and left him.

Anthony Shaffer (circa mid 1970s)

THE AUTHORS: Originally published in the UK under the pseudonym "Peter Antony" the three detective novels featuring Mr. Verity/Fathom are the work of playwright twin brothers Anthony and Peter Shaffer. During the 1960s and 1970s the two would become heralded playwrights with Anthony also picking up acclaim for his screenplay work. Peter wrote the award winning plays Equus and Amadeus, both later adapted for the screen. While Anthony created the landmark mystery thriller Sleuth and adapted both Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun for the screen. Of the two brothers, it is Anthony who was the detective novel devotee. In addition to Sleuth he went on to write three other thrillers for the stage one of which was a parody of the English manor murder mystery called The Case of the Oily Levantine, retitled simply Whodunnit? when it was produced on Broadway. Several of his plays make direct references to the work of Christie and Carr. The influence of Carr is obvious in Withered Murder. Their combined love of theater, stage life and acting, however, are the most important aspects to keep in mind while reading this last of the Mr. Fathom mysteries.

EASY TO FIND? Practically impossible I'm afraid to say. I stumbled across a relatively cheap copy back in 2012 and set it aside for years. I only took it down now because a reader of my blog had seen the photo in a post on dust jackets I did back in December 2012 and asked if it was for sale. I looked to see if there were any copies for sale and was amazed to learn there were absolutely zero copies being offered online. Nevertheless, I agreed to sell the book to him. But of course I also had to read it before I shipped it off. I thought about photocopying it prior to the sale, just in case I wanted to reprint it. Apparently the Shaffers were loath to have their detective novels reissued. During their lifetimes no one had ever been successful in getting their mystery novels back into print. I'm sure it will be even more difficult to get the job done now that they are no longer alive. Anyone out there is welcome to try to revive these books. I have zero energy to devote to the bargaining and involved correspondence these deals usually require. The books do deserve reprinting, especially this last one, a diabolically clever and often sardonically funny murder mystery.

The Mr. Verity/Mr. Fathom Trilogy
The Woman in the Wardrobe (1951)
How Doth the Little Crocodile? (1952)
Withered Murder (1955)

FFB: Four & Twenty Bloodhounds - MWA Anthology, Anthony Boucher (ed.)

For years the Mystery Writers of America have been putting out an annual anthology usually with a theme of some sort. I'm not sure if this tradition is still being continued, but it certainly was a regular practice for the first ten or fifteen years of their existence. Four & Twenty Bloodhounds (1950) is one of the earliest collections, the third to be precise. From the clever title you might be able to figure out the theme. The book contains twenty-four stories each spotlighting a different series detective. They range from the very familiar (Ellery Queen, Gideon Fell, Hildegarde Withers) to those known only to diehard fans (Johnny Liddell, Merlini, Scott Jordan, Lt. Timothy Trant) to the utterly obscure (Nick Noble, Shadrack Arnold, Mortimer Death). Each story is preceded by some background history on the writer, the detective or both, sometimes some intriguing publication history as well all provided by the genre's first real fan boy, Anthony Boucher who oversaw the collection as editor and mystery maven.

This is one of the most varied and exciting mystery story anthologies I've ever come across. There are traditional detective stories, hardboiled pulp style thrillers, some suspense tales, and even two solve-it-yourself puzzles penned by Clayton Rawson and featuring the Great Merlini. The bulk of the stories were originally published in magazines between 1942-1947 with a few stories taken from short story collections like the Solar Pons tale which was first published in book format. Some date back to the late 1930s and were pulled from pulp magazines like Lawrence Blochman's story, "The Zarapore Beat" about a NYC patrolman assigned as a bodyguard to a visiting Maharajah, pulled from a 1936 issue of Argosy. Only three pieces appear to be originally written for this volume: "Three Strips of Flesh", the only Mary Finney short story, actually just a rewrite of the novel Devil in the Bush (1945); "Girl Overboard" by Q. Patrick is the first appearance of a story that was rewritten to take place in a hotel rather than a ocean liner because (Boucher tells us in his intro) it apparently resembled a true crime case that was fresh in the headlines when Wheeler and Webb sent it off to a magazine publisher, here we get the original shipboard mystery; and "Michael Shayne as I Know Him", the only non-fiction piece in the book, by Brett Halliday who gives us the inside dope on how Shayne came into being.

That last piece by Halliday is merely an elaboration on something that each author was asked to provide for the book. Following each story is a biographical sketch modeled after that registry of the elite, Who's Who. Each author was asked to provide their character's biographical details from birthplace to schooling, professional life to hobbies. Boucher then took that data and wrote up listings as they would appear in a mythical book called The Detective Who's Who. I took a photo of Hildegarde Withers' entry as an illustration (see below) because it's one of the more amusing ones. Look under her hobbies. Dianetics! Who knew the old schoolmarm was a follower of L. Ron Hubbard's cult?

I'm still reading this 400+ page anthology, one or two stories per day, so I can't really give you an overview of the best of the 24 stories. I liked the Solve-It-Yourself puzzles neither of which I figured out. Way too subtle for me, I guess. Four & Twenty Bloodhounds includes several other first appearances, too. Of those I'll highlight the only short story appearance in book format of Rachel Murdock whose debut was in the novel The Cat Saw Murder, the only appearance in a short story of The Mysterious Traveller ("The Big Money" by Robert A. Arthur) who was created for a radio series; and a rare short story --a prizewinner in EQMM no less-- featuring Jeff and Haila Troy ("Two over Par" by Kelley Roos, set at a golf country club), one of the married couple sleuthing teams whose adventures are worth reading. Lots of detectives who I had never heard of turn up in these pages. Among them are Ken Crossen's Mortimer Death, aptly enough a mortician turned amateur sleuth, and Shadrock Arnold, created by pulp fiction writer Verne Chute, one of the three correspondence school detectives in the genre and probably the least known of that trio.

EASY TO FIND? I was surprised to discover that this book was reprinted back in 1985 by Carroll & Graf bringing the total of available editions to at least three. Online booksellers offer multiple copies of all three: US & UK hardcover, and the C&G paperback reprint. It's a book that diehard fans of detective fiction definitely ought to read if not own. The breadth of the stories, the unusual characters, and the rarity of some of the lesser known detectives in short story appearances make this anthology a must have for real devotees of the genre.

The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints - Ken Crossen

Detective Jason Jones and his tagalong partner Necessary Smith, a private eye, are confronted with the puzzling disappearance of the prime suspect who has left behind incriminating fingerprints on a murder weapon in the first few chapters of The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints (1945). Jones is known for handling unusual cases and he is prompted to deliver a mini lecture on the nature of impossible crimes and why murderers indulge in them. After offering up four different categories that might explain what appears to be an impossible vanishing Jones then goes on to draw analogies to the world of magic and prestidigitation.

“The only way to solve a case like this is to forget that it’s a human drama, in which a human life was lost, and to think of it as a trick—as sleight-of-hand. When we do that, we know that all we have to do is find the one move that is the key to the trick, and the whole thing will fall apart.”

Magicians tend to be drawn to dreaming up impossible crime mystery stories. Clayton Rawson, of course, is the most well known and even his detective The Great Merlini is a magician. Hake Talbot (aka Henning Nelms ) was also a stage magician and one time stage designer for theater. Ken Crossen who used a variety of pseudonyms in his writing and his pal Bruce Elliot were also magicians and members of an elite circle of illusionists and magicians, many of whom were also writers. Crossen has written widely in the genre and used some rather clever gimmicks, though not always done fairly, in creating impossible situations in his mystery stories. While he is not as well known or as talented in whipping up ingenious locked room problems as his colleagues Rawson, Carr and Anthony Boucher (aka H.H. Holmes) who are mentioned in passing in this short novel, Crossen deserves at least an honorable mention for his clever spins on well-used tricks and his obvious love of the genre.

I’ve written about Crossen before in his guise as “Richard Foster”. Both those books also featured impossible crimes and “miracle problems” but were not as engrossing nor as clever as this one. Perhaps Crossen was caught up in the novelty of having his detective be a Tibetan American or maybe he was expending much of his energy on creating the Green Lama pulp magazine stories. In any case both books featuring Chin Kwang Kham were not as interesting as this one featuring a Nero Wolfe clone in the person of gigantic Jason Jones.

Crossen, who has clearly borrowed from the pages of Rex Stout, even shamelessly has one character call Jason Jones “a poor man’s Nero Wolfe”. Jones is a colorful character who like Wolfe and his orchids enjoys tending to his geraniums on a rooftop hothouse. There is a strange section in the book where we learn that he often uses various geranium varieties in cooking like an exotic recipe calling for geraniums as a flavor enhancer in lemon jam.

Oddly, Necessary Smith though he is ostensibly engaged to investigate the murder by drama critic Thornton Rockwood acts as a sidekick and legman to policeman Jones. Smith does some sleuthing and even offers up a theory (which perhaps most readers will come up with pages before he does) that turns out to be utterly wrong. Jones is the real detective here. It’s an odd pairing and I’m sure that no real life police department would look favorably on Jones using a P.I. as his partner. But we’ll let it slide because it’s all done in pulpy fun. It’s a book, after all, and hardly grounded in reality.

Speaking of books Crossen uses a particular mystery novel as one of the biggest clues in this story. It also happens to show one of his weaknesses as a pulp writer –- self-referential jokes. One of the characters is a mystery novel addict and his copy of The Laughing Buddha Murders has gone missing. It turns up in a hotel room briefly and just as quickly disappears. The joke here is that The Laughing Buddha Murders is by a writer named Richard Foster and it happens to be very real. (Anyone curious about the book can briefly read about it in my post on Crossen writing as Foster by clicking here.) For the sake of the story this “version” of The Laughing Buddha Murders has not been officially published even though in real life it was published one year earlier than …Phantom Fingerprints. Both books were put out by the digest publisher Vulcan Publications; Buddha is Vulcan Mystery #3 (1944) and Fingerprints is Vulcan Mystery #5 (1945). Over the course of the novel Smith and Jones try to find out who has read the book and who might have borrowed the advance copy from choreographer and detective story nut Gregor Santos. There is also a brief mention of John Dickson Carr and his ingenious locked room mysteries which turn out to be the preferred reading of both Santos and a ditzy actress named Toni Dorne.

In …Phantom Fingerprints Crossen makes use of a very familiar plot from the annals of Golden Age mysterydom. A group of theatrical professionals are at the mercy of a scheming ruthless blackmailer who happens to be producer Max Black. Many of Block's productions are staffed with big name stars who he has wheedled into working for him lest he reveal their deep, dark secrets. Additionally, Block would demand cash payments for keeping those secrets under cover. No surprise when he’s found stabbed in his home during a big post-theater shindig where not too coincidentally many of his blackmail victims were guests. The weird thing about the crime is that the murderer left his bloody fingerprints on the knife in Block’s chest. The prints match those of Max Thale, a visiting PR man from a Hollywood movie studio. But Thale appears to have dematerialized. He is nowhere inside the house and no footprints can be found outside the snow covered ground to indicate he might have jumped from a window or snuck out some other way. All the entrances and exits were guarded by trustworthy policeman and they swear no one got past them. How did Thale manage his disappearing act? That the book is populated with theater people ought to be a big tipoff.

There are several other murders and found at each scene of the crime a bloody handprint matching the prints of Max Thale. The trick of the fingerprints and how they were created is probably the most original feature of a book filled with familiar characters and situations. We even get a “talking villain” scene that seems to have been created solely to fill up some pages with words. I think anyone who knows even a little about stage magic might spot the telltale clue that can lead to figuring out the fingerprint mystery. The explanation when it comes is glibly related and I doubt it would result in the intended effect, but Crossen gets points for trying. Supposedly, the solution is based on fact and can be found in a book on French criminology though Crossen never mentions the exact title nor the author’s name.

FFB: Mr. Diabolo - Anthony LeJeune

A ghost-like figure clad in Victorian wardrobe complete with cloak, flamboyant waistcoat and stovepipe hat appears and disappears in a haunted alley known as Devil's Lane. Hours later a man is found strangled in a locked room. Has a long forgotten specter returned and killed again? I can a smell a John Dickson Carr homage at ten paces. In Mr Diabolo (1960) Anthony Lejeune tries his hand at what many other crime writers have also attempted -- to write a convincing impossible crime tale with a multiple puzzling mysteries and a tantalizing locked room murder worthy of the master. He almost succeeds.

In the opening chapter, "The Coming of Mr. Diabolo" we learn of the specter's legend which dates back to the days of young Lord Farrant, one of the founders of the College of Western Studies, who staged "mysterious midnight parties in his rooms."  Professor Cornelius describes the origins of the specter:

His rooms smelled of incense or, some said, of brimstone. his servant found the stubs of black candles and once, half burned, a kitten's paw. And sounds were heard. In short, people became quite convinced that young Lord Farrant was indulging in the black arts. [...] his friends were less discreet, particularly in their cups. They were overheard speaking of somebody who was present at their meetings called 'Mr. Diabolo.'

A conference of the Anglo-American Literary and Political Society ("the Alps" to its members) has brought together academics from both the US and the UK to the campus of the college, a former monastery dating back to the 15th century. The story is narrated by Foreign Office agent Alastair Burke who is allowed to participate in the criminal investigation as a liaison for the Americans attending the conference until a lawyer can be found to represent them. He continues to be involved int eh case when he becomes a witness to a second attempted murder. It is the mysterious Arthur Blaise, however, former associate of Burke's in the spy trade, who unravels the mystery of the disappearing Mr. Diabolo and the locked room murder of Bill Frazer.

As is the case with many mysteries of this subgenre the characters are obsessed with the miraculous circumstances that obscure the crime. Burke and the lovely Barbara Tracey act as the amateur sleuthing duo who do their best to gather data from the suspected members of "the Alps" all the while remaining mystified by the unscalable wall that surrounds the alley, the pile of clothes left behind by the vanished specter, and the door locked on the inside of Frazer's sealed room. Arthur Blaise, like Fell and Merrivale, will not succumb to the impossibilities. He absorbs and examines the evidence, weeds through the lies and deceit, holding back most of his thoughts until the final pages when he explains away all the obfuscating mysteries as the magician's tricks they really are.

"Anthony Lejeune" is in reality Edward Anthony Thompson, crime fiction reviewer, thriller writer, and close friend of Dennis Wheatley. His debut spy thriller Crowded and Dangerous (1959) was described as "snugly readable, bustling Buchanish" by esteemed critic Maurice Richardson with a plot summed up by Violet Grant of the Daily Telegraph as "the trail leads from a Chelsea houseboat to a ship in the London docks, sailing under an Iron [C]urtain flag." Lejeune later created series character Adam Gifford, a reporter and spy, who appeared in at least three other mysteries one of which is the tempting The Dark Trade (1966), published in a US paperback reprint as Death of a Pornographer. In the 1980s he returned to writing mysteries with an academic background and created Professor Lowery who solves crimes in two books.

Japanese edition from 2010
One of the 10 Best "honkaku"- orthodox mysteries

Mr. Diabolo is for the most part an engaging read but my attention began to wander with the probing exploration of Frazer who we discover is a womanizing cad with a taste for blackmail. The bulk of the tale is sidetracked by more and more secrets uncovered related to Frazer's past life and the women in the cast. Too much attention is spent in discussing the architecture of the building, the numerous stairwells, the abundance of keys to all the rooms,  and other minutiae which tend to confuse and overwhelm the reader. There seems to be a lot of clutter in this mystery.

Thankfully, when the solution comes there is one brilliant surprise -- perhaps a nod to a famous Anthony Boucher novel which also shares a similar trick -- that redeemed the book for me. With such a great opening, the macabre legend, and the baffling vanishing of a ghost-like killer Lejeune's novel aspires to true greatness and promises to dazzle the reader. Sadly, he only manages to raise a faint glow of surprise just falling short of book that might have been a real classic in locked room mysteries.

The Case of the Seven of Calvary - Anthony Boucher

Boucher's first mystery The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937) is a daring piece of crime fiction in this heyday of the Golden Age when everyone seemed to be breaking the rules. He joins other detective fiction iconoclasts who did things like have a first person narrator turn out to be the murderer, or have the detective turn out to be the killer, or have an ambiguously supernatural solution to a murder. What he does exactly is something I will not reveal, of course, but it seems to me to be one of the first rule breaking books of its kind for this period.

We have here yet another academic mystery in which John Ashwin, Ph.D. acts as the armchair sleuth who works out the puzzling aspects of three strange murders without ever leaving his book lined home. Ashwin is a professor of Sanskrit at a California university (modeled after Berkeley). Like another well known detective who never leaves his Manhattan apartment Ashwin has his own Goodwin-like footman in the person of Martin Lamb, a researcher in German at the university, who delivers first hand accounts of his investigations to Ashwin. Lamb says something self-deprecating of himself in relation to the murders (something I guess another person might call "un-PC" ) that I marked and have to include here:

"You may have gathered that I've been taking a lot of interest in these deaths.  Well, I am that worst abortion of nature, an amateur detective..."

Wonder what the Right to Lifers would say about that?

The book seems to be influenced by the Van Dine school both structurally with the "author" acting as narrator and in its content with an arch tone, a sophisticated and cosmopolitan cast of characters, literate and intellectual dialogue plus -- most Van Dine-ish of all -- a story overloaded with all sorts of arcane knowledge like Spanish plays in translation, Gnosticism and other Catholic heretical sects, and even Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Ashwin also discusses Sanskrit literature tangentially in a way that reminded of Philo Vance's habit throwing around esoteric trivia that usually has nothing to do with the murders in the Van dine books. In this case most of the esoterica will be pertinent to the crimes and reading about it is much more fun that Vance's usual pedantry that tends to annoy. It does with me, at least.

A professor is found dead on the campus only a few feet from the home of a young student he apparently was visiting. He's been struck with a blunt instrument and the weapon cannot be found. By his body is found a scrap of paper with a diagram that looks like "a curious sort of italic F, mounted upon three rectangles shaped like steps." The reader should not be fooled for an instant by that description. This is, of course, the Seven of Calvary of the title (see the DJ of the 1st edition above). But just what that symbol signifies will remain a mystery until about the book's halfway mark.

And speaking of not being fooled -- this first murder had a couple of puzzles attached to it that I figured out easily and was rather disappointed. I wondered why Boucher made it all so transparent. But then that smart man Professor Ashwin reveals that the first victim was mistaken for someone else and the whole story turns upside down. By the end of the book two more deaths occur and I was completely taken in by all the later misdirection. I doubt anyone will discover the truth behind all the deaths. It's a devious piece of work that is definitely a real rule breaker for the 1930s.

For fans of devilish puzzles and intellectual academic mysteries this is a book I highly recommend checking out. Though you'll be hard pressed to find a hardcover copy of the first edition at an affordable price, there are cheap hardcover reprints in Macmillan's "Murder Revisited" series and the Collier paperback, a copy of which I managed to obtain for under $5.

On the Road Again

Off to St. Louis for Bouchercon today. It'll be the first time in over five years that I will once again make the five and half hour trip in a car by myself. Considering I never drive on a daily basis this ought to be a true adventure. That added to the fact that I have zero tolerance for reckless driving ought to make for a riveting driving experience. Maybe I should pop a couple of Xanax before I get in the rental car. Wish me luck.

I'll be bringing the laptop along and updating my visit. I'm looking forward to finally putting faces to the names of all the bloggers and readers I've met since the start of this year. Maybe I'll even post some photos of me and the people I meet. But don't get your hopes up.

The Case of the Solid Key (1941) - Anthony Boucher

One of the reasons I love reading vintage mysteries is that I learn so many odd facts. The most recent tidbit: apparently the gums shrink in the mouth of a corpse after an extended period of time. This may well have been covered on an episode of one of the many versions of the CSI dynasty, but I doubt it. It's too low tech and not disgusting enough for CSI. The best vintage mysteries (in my reading it tends to be the Americans more than the Brits) are chock full of these nuggets of arcane information.

These days killers may dress in lint free coveralls and cover their crime scenes in plastic sheeting for easy disposal of blood, hair, fibers and other pesky detritus that might give them away. Or they may pour gallons of bleach over the crime scene to eradicate that troublesome genetic info left behind. Gone are the days when a murderer had to use his ingenuity to mislead or cover up a crime. Now it's all about science. That's right I'm blaming DNA technology for ruining crime fiction. And especially for putting a damper on writers' imaginations. Give me a corpse with shrunken gums so a murderer can shove a set of someone else's dentures in the mouth and have the corpse misidentified. That's misdirection! Did I say not disgusting enough for CSI? I take that back.

Somewhere Fergus O'Breen picked up this fact of gums shrinking after death and relays it to his Watson Norman Harker, a budding playwright from Oklahoma, and the ever exasperated Lt. A. Jackson in his penultimate adventure The Case of the Solid Key. The corpse in question -- which may or may not be sporting its own dentures -- is discovered in the locked theatrical workroom where the victim had been experimenting with fire effects. Unfortunately, the fire effect seems to have exploded rendering the face utterly unrecognizable – thus the need to resort to dental records for identification. The victim is Rupert Carruthers, a shady theater owner who financed the company through extortion. The suspects are a motley group of actors and actresses, the stage manager, the company manager and a playwright.

This is a theater mystery. With actors and actresses in the list of suspects the reader should be on the lookout for impersonation, insincere emotions, volatile temperaments and plenty of heavy drinking. It's also a theater situated in Hollywood and many of the actors have motion picture careers on their minds. Fergus O'Breen's sister Maureen just happens to be a publicity agent at Metropolis Pictures. The movie studio and Maureen play a secondary but integral role in an unusual subplot involving one of the actresses with whom Norman is smitten.

This is yet another example of a detective novel with multiple solutions and one in which the detective gets it all wrong. Fergus realizes too late that he overlooked a rather obvious fact which shifted all the other evidence making his rather brilliant solution nothing more than one of his fanciful theories. There is a lot of banter between Lt. Jackson and O'Breen about the difference between police work and private eye sleuthing. Jackson even reveals he's rather well read in detective fiction:

"I'll admit," said Jackson, "that Rupert Carruthers was asking for murder. On purely psychological grounds, maybe this looks like a murder case, but the physical evidence is too strong the other way."
"Too strong is right. It's so strong it smells. No natural death could ever be so congoddamedclusively natural."
Jackson grinned. "You've been reading Chesterton again. Bad influence."

Later, just to rile O'Breen, Jackson does a little role reversal:

"In the meantime, Fergus, let me call your attention to one fact: there's only one conceivable advantage that that solid key has over an ordinary key."
"And that is?"
"That,"said Lt Jackson, "is its disadvantage."
"Hey! Fergus protested. "I'm supposed to be the brilliant if eccentric sleuth that makes cryptic remarks. Remember?"
"Sorry, I could not resist it."

I liked this thoroughly American mystery novel. I've been reading far too many Brits with far too many plots about someone who makes the fatal mistake of announcing he is changing his will in front of all his heirs. It was a refreshing change to have a story about acting and the movie business, scenes set in coffee shops and bars, jokes about comic books and Lifebuoy soap, and a rambunctious detective swearing up a storm with tongue twisting conglomerations like the one above. (But I tried it. Just not natural, not at all something that comes trippingly off the tongue.)

from the DJ of The Compleat Werewolf

The Fergus O'Breen books are breezy, clever and pretty tricky to boot.  I'd suggest you keep your eyes peeled for one of the many paperback editions of any of the five titles. For your book hunting pleasure they are all listed below.

Fergus O'Breen Novels
The Case of the Crumpled Knave (1939)
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940)
The Case of the Solid Key (1941)
The Case of the Seven Sneezes (1942)

Short story collections
The Compleat Werewolf (1969) - two short stories w/ O'Breen
Far and Away (1955) - one story w/ O'Breen