The Curious Cases of Cyriack Skinner Grey - Arthur Porges

We've already looked at Porges's Dr. Joel Hoffman stories. As the title clearly indicates, this time it's time for the Cyriack Skinner Grey stories.

Grey is a wheelchair-bound detective, a former research scientist who had an accident while mountaineering several years before the first story. That means that these stories can be seen as pure armchair detective tales. For his help, Grey has both his son, Edgar, and his former student and current police lieutenant Trask. They act as "Watsons" to Grey's Sherlock Holmes.

In this volume, all sixteen stories about Grey are featured. A slight drawback of the stories is that they are quite formulaic - Lieutenant Trask comes with a problem to Grey, describes the background, and then Grey sits and thinks about the whole thing (sometimes sending out Edgar to perform some kind of check) until he finally finds a minor thing that could explain everything. This minor thing is often fairly obscure as well.

This impression is also enhanced by the fact that all stories have the same title structure: "The Scientist and the..."The stories are also generally quite short, just a few pages or so.

In fact, because of this structure, they can almost be compared to the Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown stories for young adults. Certainly they're not as juvenile, but an astute reader can solve the crime the same way by discovering the important fact that will solve the whole crime.

The first story is "... Bagful of Water". The problem Trask presents to the researcher is a man who died while walking outside his hotel. It turns out that inside the hotel is a gathering of drunk men who seem to have had the great idea of dropping bags of water from their windows on the upper floors. However, the only witness is the person who benefits most from the death...

So, what Grey needs to do here is explain if and how the witness could have engineered the death to look the way it did. And he does so by pointing out a fact which I'd say is almost impossible for the reader to even guess at - it's not even something mentioned before in the story. As an introduction to the series it is good, because it's an archetypal Grey story, but the obscureness of the solution lets it down.

Next is "... Wife Killer". Here, Lieutenant Trask has come across a man who's suspected of murdering two former wives, and now his third wife has died, but he has an ironclad alibi - he was several miles away, on the telephone with the police.

This is a bit better. The fact that Grey uncovers to smash the alibi is something the reader also can find. The fact that the man is a multiple wife killer is also a clever way to give some justification to such an elaborate scheme as we get here. So all in all, a distinct improvement.

"... Vanished Weapon" comes next. A teenager is chased by a couple of cops. He runs into an apartment, and the cops hear him fire his gun inside. When the cops break down the door, apart from the teenager there is a dead man inside, but the weapon simply cannot be found.

The story is one of the shortest one here. Unfortunately, it's less solvable than the previous story, for two reasons: First, the thing that causes the weapon to go undetected is not signalled very well in the story, and second, it's incredibly hard to imagine that the police wouldn't actually search there anyway.

Let's move along to "... Obscene Crime". Here we have a man making obscene calls to a woman, and Trask asks Grey if there is some way they can stop the man from telephoning her.

To be honest, this story is bordering on silly. There's no detection here, what we get is Grey devising a way of scaring the telephone terror guy from continuing his obscenities. At least it's very short.

And that's as opposed to "... Multiple Murder", which is the longest story here. Trask is called out to a penthouse where he finds several people lying dead in a swimming pool, even though no one could access the floor.

As you can see from the description, the length of the story allows Porges to round it out a bit better with some background. It's not just simply a case where Trask comes to Grey's house and presents him with a problem - we get a bit of setup and some police investigation as well. This is to the advantage of the story. The explanation to how the murder was committed is also good, making this the best story of the collection so far.

With "... Invisible Safe", we're back with the short brain teasers. Here we have a jewel thief who's stolen a diamond and hidden it somewhere in his hotel room. The police have arrested him, but though they search the room thoroughly, they cannot find it.

Admittedly, the hiding place is great. No doubt about that. I just wish that Porges had taken the time to flesh out the story a bit more. As it is, it's just a quick puzzler and not entirely fair to the reader, because I fail to see how I was supposed to know what I needed to know to solve it.

"...Two Thieves" is another story about a diamond theft. In this case we have a religious nut who steals a packet of diamonds from a jeweller's store and then legs it. However, there are police on his tail, and they catch him fairly quickly. Only problem is - he doesn't have the diamonds on him anymore...

We get what amounts to a rare example of a false solution from Grey here, before he deduces the correct one. It's one of the breezier stories in the collection, though again it's hardly fair play to the reader.

The next story, "... Time Bomb", features a man who is threatening the city with a timebomb, several years after his death! Now Grey has to find the bomb before it explodes, but first he needs to work out how someone can manage to get a timebomb to work from the grave.

The whole setup shows off Porges's imagination. I'm not sure I'd think this is a particularly possible or probable scenario. And again, I think the obscure fact that the whole plan relies on is unfair to the reader. Still, a fun read.

"... Platinum Chain" follows, and here Grey needs to find out what happened to the titular chain. A man has been killed by strangulation in his workshop while working on the platinum chain. However, when the only other person present exits the chain has vanished into thin air. And since the chain is the only possible murder weapon, it needs to be found for the case to stick.

Another short-ish story with a quick solution from Grey. Again the hiding place is something I'd have expected the police to search even though they mightn't have known that it was the hiding place, so that's a bit disappointing.

In "... Exterminator" we're taken into the world of dictators and assassinations. An old dictator has been killed in his hotel room even though the room and the hotel was guarded everywhere. And yet somehow managed to bring a large enough quantity of cyanide into the room to kill the old man.

This is a longer story again, and again that is to its advantage. Another good thing about the story is that solution doesn't hinge on a single obscure fact. Yes, it's quite technical and I'd defy anyone to guess it, but compared with some of the previous stories this doesn't feel like a letdown.

"... Missing Pistol" presents a problem where two business partners are together inside a room. One of them dies from a gunshot wound, and the other claims that the shot came through the open window. This seems unlikely to the police for a variety of reasons, but unless they can find the weapon they might have to settle for that explanation...

I like this solution as well. It's prosaic and simple, and more to the point doesn't involve something very technical or obscure. Sure, I think it's pretty far-fetched, but it would most probably work in the real world.

A fence has taken a "... Stolen Rembrandt" onto his boat, but when the police search it, it's nowhere to be found. As usual, Trask comes to Grey to ask him to suggest a possible place where it could be hidden.

This story is a kind of homage to Poe's "The Purloined Letter" (and probably Edgar Wallace's "The Missing Romney" as well). The painting is hidden almost in the open, and yet no one finds it. Again, I liked the simpleness of the solution, and again, I think that like the two stories it celebrates the police should be expected to find such a hiding place...

"... Impassable Gulf" is again a bit longer and is unusually an inverted mystery where we see the murder committed by the criminal. However, after the murder the body appears in a muddy clearing on the other side of the titular gulf - and neither we nor the police know how it was transported there.

This might have been the easiest solution to see through, and that is mainly due to the fact that the story is longer and gives us more background. So while having a greater length is generally to the advantage of Porges's stories, in this case it actually weakens the impossibility. A pity, really.

We get a bit more background in "... Poisoner" as well. A man is having his usual Thursday restaurant dinner. He's been going there weekly for 23 years, but this particular night he dies from poisoning.

This story has an explanation that brings a smile to my lips. It's devilishly simple and yet so clever. I guess that again the police seem quite negligent when they couldn't find how the man was poisoned, but I'll let that slide.

"... Heavenly Alibi" gives us a situation where a man is murdered on an isolated part of his farm, and yet the obvious suspect is photographed far away from there by his wife.

I like this type of stories, where the detective has to break through a photographic alibi. The solution here reminds me of the one in Clayton Rawson's "Merlini and the Photographic Clue". It just adds one thing to the whole setup that makes it just a tad different. Clever.

"... One-Word Clue" is the last Cyriack Skinner Grey story. It's a very short one, where Grey has to explain a dying message. A reporter has been killed and left only the word "Thais" on a piece of paper.

I don't know if it's because I'm not a native speaker, but my first interpretation of the clue was not the one that Porges imagines is the first interpretation... Instead, I immediately read the word as Grey did when he came up with the solution. However, making the correct interpretation didn't help me see the whole solution. On the other hand, neither could anyone else have done so because the explanation hinges on something we couldn't have known.


The Grey stories are, on the whole, not as good as the Dr. Hoffmann ones. They are just a bit too slight, too reliant on one single thing to be effective as mystery stories. As I said earlier, they are very reminiscent of the Encyclopedia Brown stories in this regard.

I'd say they'd gain from being read with a couple of breaks, not immediately after one another. There are some other aspects of the stories that are quite repetitive - Grey's offer of a cold drink, Trask's and Edgar Gray's stilted banter - that makes it more of a chore reading them in one session.

But that's not to say that the stories are not worthwhile. I've decided to use seven of these sixteen stories, and that's clearly not a bad batting average. The stories chosen are "Vanished Weapon", "Multiple Murder", "Invisible Safe", "Exterminator", "Missing Pistol", "Poisoner" and "Heavenly Alibi".

As with the former Porges volume, TomCat has reviewed it on his fine blog Beneath the Stains of Time: http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.se/2012/06/go-gadget-go.html


More Things Impossible - Edward D. Hoch

This is the second volume of Dr. Sam Hawthorne stories. It features fifteen stories about the good doctor. One impressive thing about these stories is that there is always a sense of chronology to them. If you read them from start to end you'll get an impression of how the town of Northmont develops, how Sam changes from a young, inexperienced doctor in the late 20s to a well-seasoned one in the 40s, and we get to follow a couple of other characters through their lives as well.

But of course it's the impossibilities that keep us coming back for more. As with the first collection, the quality can be a bit up and down, but there is always something about each story that will satisfy.

The first story we get here is "... the Revival Tent" where we have a healer showing up in Northmont. Dr. Sam, scientific mind that he has, is naturally not particularly impressed with the fellow, and after one of his performances decides to have it out with him. Unfortunately, the man is killed with a sword right in front of him and suddenly Dr. Sam is a suspected murderer.

In this story, we know that the murder is impossible, because it's our very own Dr. Sam who says it is. The solution... well, I'm not sure. Hoch does all he can to convince me that it would work, but I'm sceptical. However, I do like how Hoch manages to work in quite an impressive motive for the murderer.

"... the Whispering House" is haunted, it seems. And therefore a pre-Ghostbuster ghostbuster turns up in Northmont to investigate whether it is a true ghost or something else entirely. He recruits Hawthorne as a helper, and while they are inside they see the shape of a man pass through the house and go up the stairs into a secret room on the upper floor. But when they enter this room, the man is sitting there dead - but he died almost one day ago!

Now that's not a bad set-up, you've got to admit. And I wish that the solution lived up to that. The impossibility is however quite reminiscent of a certain story by C. Daly King, so that's a bit unfortunate. Also, it's pretty obvious who did it because there's so few characters around. A bit of a disappointment, really.

In "... the Boston Common" Dr. Sam is going to a medical convention in Boston. He brings his regular nurse April, and she boasts about his abilities in seeing through impossible problems and bringing villains to justice. Of course there's a problem in Boston at this particular time, where people who are walking through the park just outside Dr. Sam's hotel are killed by poison. So Dr. Sam steps in to try to solve this crime.

To me, this is only marginally an impossible crime, but you may disagree with that conclusion. It's one of those "it's only impossible because or really stupid reasons" - sort of like Chesterton's "Invisible Man" or Poe's "Purloined Letter". I do think there's a paucity of clues and as a Dr. Sam story it's a bit underwhelming. I think if it had been written by someone else, for example, I'd enjoy it more. But I've come to expect more from Hoch.

But he redeems himself with "... the General Store". This is a fine problem where a man is found shot inside his closed and locked store. Inside, a woman is lying unconscious. Everyone assumes she was the culprit, but Dr. Hawthorne has other ideas.

As you might have guessed I liked this story. The solution to the impossibility is quite elegant in all its simplicity. Sam gets to be a bit more physical in his approach to finding an explanation.

In "... the Courthouse Gargoyle", a judge is killed during a trial by drinking a glass of water containing poison. And yet everyone saw him pour the water himself into the glass.

Another fine set up. Courtroom scenes are always a good setting, they have an inherent tension that improve most mystery stories. If there is one thing that is a let down, it's how the crime came about. But there has to be room for this type of solution as well. I don't mind it once in a while.

"... the Pilgrims Windmill" is the next crime scene. A man is found with severe burns inside the windmill, even though there was no one present who could have set him on fire. And just a few days later a second man is found dead in the same windmill, also burned to death.

This is pretty damn good, I think. Hoch is on a roll with his stories here. The misdirection is very good, and the author pulls out a least likely suspect which almost compares with the best of Agatha Christie.

I compared a previous story here to one of C. Daly King's, and to be honest, there are some similarities between "... the Gingerbread Houseboat" and another King story, "The Episode of Torment IV". Here we have four people who suddenly vanish while out on a boattrip on the lake.

There is a bit of a cheat here in the solution because when they do their first search, they miss something that they should have seen. Still, apart from that this solution is much better than the one in the King story, which is a huge relief. So, all in all a good story.

I've mentioned that we get to follow Sam through time in Hoch's stories. In the former tale, Dr. Sam had a new girlfriend who returns in this story, and we also get world news because it takes place on the same day as the huge stock crash in 1929. The impossible crime in "... the Pink Post Office" uses this fact as a basis for the impossibility. A man wants to post some money to New York because the stock market seems to be collapsing, but the envelope just disappears though it's been lying out in the open where sheriff Lens could watch it the whole time.

This is a little bit silly, to be honest. At least the hiding place. And the hiding place is what makes it an impossible crime, because without it, there'd have been no doubt who the thief was. But even though it's silly, it's still imaginative - and I did get a little smile on my lips when I read the explanation.

"... the Octagon Room" presents a problem where the titular room is going to be used for a wedding reception. Yet, when it's opened on the morning of the wedding, a man is found with a knife in his chest inside the locked room.

This tale has one of the more elaborate and technical solutions that Hoch has ever attempted. I'm not sure it's to the story's advantage. The reason for creating the impossibility doesn't convince either. What does work well, though, is the slight changes that Hoch has made to his usual Hawthorne storytelling, such that the killer is actually approaching Dr. Sam after having been released from his/her prison sentence. Rather effective, I thought.

We had some gypsies in the previous collection, and in "... the Gypsy Camp" we get a new band of them. In this case, one of the gypsies arrive at the hospital complaining that he's been cursed. And then suddenly he topples over and dies. The autopsy shows that he has a bullet in his heart - and yet there is no bullethole in his body!

Now that's an impossible situation to top all impossible murders! And I think the solution lives up to that. One drawback of such an impossible situation is that it means that only one person can be responsible for it, but when the reader is so bamboozled I guess that's just a minor complaint. And anyway, Hoch tosses in another impossibility - the gypsy band just ups and leaves with no trace even though they are under guard - just because he can, so this is one of his best ever.

As I mentioned earlier, these stories take place in the late 20s-early 30s, and in "... the Bootlegger's Car" we get some gangsters in Northmont because of the Prohibition. But never fear, there's an impossibility as well. Dr. Sam is kidnapped to treat a gangster leader who's received a gunshot wound, but needs to be alert since he's meeting a rival boss. However, after the meeting the rival is seen entering his car and yet he is not inside it when the cardoor is opened again.

The impossibility comes quite late in this story, because there is quite a lot of background first in order to set it up. That also means that it feels a little bit tacked on to the whole thing. Sometimes you get the feeling that the tale doesn't know if it's going to be a gangster story or a fairplay mystery. But the solution to the whole impossible situation is still pretty good. I don't think Hoch quite manages to hide the culprit well enough that a seasoned reader won't immediately pick him out.

"... the Tin Goose" gives us another story that's a bit reminiscent of one in the first Hawthorne collection. This time it's another aeroplane mystery as the flying barnstormers come to Northmont with their show. A woman performer is up performing her tricks on a plane - walking around on its wings or dangling beneath it - but when the plane has set down, the pilot is found dead in his cabin. And yet there were two passengers inside the plane who didn't see anyone enter the cabin during the entire flight.

Another lovely impossibility with a solution that just about works. I'm never entirely satisfied with the type of trick that Hoch employs here for the murderer to leave the locked enclosing. I do have to wonder if no one would have noticed.

We meet Dr. Sam's parents in "... the Hunting Lodge". The entire family is invited to join a hunt in winter. And since it's winter you can bet that someone is killed inside a house with no footprints but his own leading there.

The "no footprints in the snow" is a perennial impossible problem, and always a great one. We do get a fine variation of it here. I like the explanation in its simplicity. The one niggling question I have is, didn't the murderer take quite a big risk of being seen?

Next follows "... the Body in the Haystack", where Dr. Sam is visiting a farm. The sheriff is asked to guard the farm that night because there is talk about a bear being out and about, and also because a prisoner has just been released and threatened the farm owner. But the next morning, the farm owner is found in his own haystack, pierced by a pitchfork.

Dr. Sam allows the sheriff to make the explanation here, which is a nice change of pace. It shows that he's not the dimwitted lawman he's sometimes appeared as in previous stories. Though Hoch could have given sheriff Lens a more difficult case to solve - because most readers should be able to see through the misdirection here and immediately guess who did it.

"... Santa's Lighthouse" rounds things off for us here. Dr. Sam has taken a few days off and is motoring along the coast when he approaches the titular lighthouse. He enters and speaks to the owners, a brother and sister. While he's on his way out together with the sister, the brother suddenly crashes down from the top, with a dagger in his chest.

I'll have to give Hoch credit here, because there are only three characters in the story and yet he manages to completely hide the method of the murderer from the reader. Sure, it's not hard to guess at the murderer, but I defy anyone to find out how it was actually committed.


I found this collection a bit better than the first one. There are more really great stories here, though I think that perhaps the disappointments - the few that there are - are a bit bigger here as well. But as I said, Hoch generally manages to put something in his stories to make them worthwhile anyway.

And because they are worthwhile in some way, I'll keep them all for my impossible crime project as well.

As with the first collection, the Puzzle Doctor has some very nice things to say about this one: https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/more-things-impossible-the-second-casebook-of-dr-sam-hawthorne-by-edward-d-hoch/


Diagnosis Impossible - Edward D. Hoch

During the late 90s someone in the Swedish publishing world had a brainwave and started publishing a couple of short story collections with Edward D. Hoch. As I think everyone could have foreseen, this couldn't last, and the attempt at introducing Hoch to Swedish mystery readers was aborted after four collections had been published.

But, within those four collections we managed to get quite a few of interesting stories by the versatile Mr. Hoch. And the relevance for this post is that the entire content of Hoch's first collection of Dr. Sam Hawthorne stories - "Diagnosis Impossible", if you hadn't guessed - was translated into Swedish.

Hoch has several characters he's made into series regulars. They all have some kind of hook that differentiate them from the other characters: Simon Ark has cases that touch upon the occult and the religious, Captain Leopold has the cases that need to be investigated by the police, Rand is the spy, Nick Velvet is the gentleman (well...) thief, and so on.

But what interests us most here is that the Sam Hawthorne stories are all of the impossible crime variety. It has to be said that almost all Hoch characters have had to deal with impossible crimes from time to time, but Hawthorne gets them all the time. Over time, there were a bit more than 70 cases for Hawthorne to cut his teeth on, and all except the final fifteen have been published in collections by Crippen & Landru. All stories are called "The Problem of..." - with one single exception, which we'll return to in a later post.

"Diagnosis Impossible" starts off with the oft anthologised "... the Covered Bridge". In it, dr Sam - as he's called by everyone in the city of Northmont, where most of his cases take place - is in his car following a young man driving a horse and carriage, but when Hawthorne and his fellow passenger reach the covered bridge, the tracks in the snow just end and the man, horse and wagon simply disappear.

It's a lovely setup, and the explanation is nothing to sneeze at either. Hoch plants the relevant clues so we as readers can - but won't! - pick up on them. A very good introduction to a wonderful series of stories.

Next comes "... the Old Gristmill", wherein an author is preparing to leave Northmont, and asks Sam to transport his trunk to the station. Later that same night, the old mill burns down and the author is found dead inside. And when Dr Sam retrieves the trunk to see if there are any clues inside, it's quite empty...

This wasn't quite as good as its predecessor. The trick used here is of the kind that a reader has to question - could anyone really get through with that without anyone realising? The solution to the impossibility itself is not the greatest either. So, in all a bit of a disappointment here.

"... the Lobster Shack" is better. Dr Sam is invited to the wedding of a colleague's daughter. At the wedding party, the featured entertainment is a magician whose escape routine becomes something different when he is found dead in the shack he was supposed to escape from...

I've always liked these "escape from chains and locks" stories. The solution to the impossibility is enjoyable, though slightly technical. An improvement on the previous story.

In "... the Haunted Bandstand" the mayor of Northmont is killed - you will soon notice that being the mayor of this town is not a particularly desirable position to have - just as he's supposed to make a Fourth of July speech. He is stabbed by the supposed bandstand ghost, right in front of everyone.

And that's the problem. Hoch writes it all very well, but there's just no chance that you can get me to believe that the trick used for the impossibility would work in front of such a crowd as we have here.

Dr. Sam is travelling by train when an impossible murder takes place in "... the Locked Caboose". Inside the caboose is a solitary guard who is found stabbed to death, and the valuable jewels that were stored in a safe have been stolen.

Dr. Sam is lucky the train had so few passengers, otherwise he'd probably have had a harder time finding the culprit. The explanation for the impossibility is fairly obvious for the experienced reader, but Hoch still manages to work it all into a fine story.

Northmont also has a small school, and in "... the Little Red Schoolhouse", one of the boys suddenly vanish while out on the schoolyard between classes. Even though a teacher kept her eyes on him almost the entire time, she couldn't see any sign of where he vanished to. And then the parents get a ransom letter...

Again, this is one of those stories where you have to question if that kind of misdirection really would work. Still, Hoch turns a run-of-the-mill kidnap story into something more exciting and makes it all worthwhile in the end.

The next story is "... the Christmas Steeple" where we have a band of gypsies who suddenly appear in Northmont. They are invited into church by the friendly pastor, but after the service is over Dr. Sam and sheriff Lens see the pastor go up in the steeple. They follow him, but when they reach him at the top he is dead - stabbed by a gypsy dagger - and only the leader of the gypsy band is there with him.

Now, this is only an impossible mystery if you believe that the gypsy leader is not the murderer, so of course we don't... It's yet another example of that questionable misdirection, but I can just about see that it might have worked in this case. Hoch manages to cram in quite a lot on these few pages, it's a joy to behold.

Then, as a kind of homage to Jacques Futrelle's famous short story "Cell No. 13" we get "...Cell 16". In this story, a wanted criminal is arrested in Northmont, and sheriff Lens puts him inside his new jail, while waiting for the Boston police to come and transport him away. Nonetheless, one night later the criminal has somehow managed to escape from his locked cell.

The Futrelle homage mainly amounts to a shoutout to the story - there really isn't that much in common between the stories otherwise. The explanation to the disappearance of the criminal is actually all right, I guess. I do think that Hoch takes some liberties with the way he tells the story that makes it appear that certain moves by the criminal were not possible and then the solution just says that it was possible after all. So, maybe a bit of a cheat in that regard.

"... the Country Inn" comes next. Here, the owner of the titular inn is murdered. His manager tells a tall tale about robbers who came to rob the inn, but having shot the owner turned and ran out through the kitchen door. Only problem is - that door was locked and could not have been opened.

The solution uses the reader's expectations against him/her. Some would call it a cheat, but I think it just about works. In that regard, it's a bit unfortunate that it follows the previous story, though.

The next story, "... the Voting Booth", makes up for all that though. In it, a newcomer to Northmont is challenging sheriff Lens for the sheriff position. During the election, he enters the booth to put down his vote, but when he exits, he has a stab wound and dies. Yet the knife cannot be found, though a thorough search is carried out.

This is a great story. Hoch manages to get in several false leads and red herrings to thoroughly confuse the reader, and then it turns out that the solution is so very simple and elegant. I'll dock one point because the reason for the impossibility is a little far-fetched.

"... the County Fair" has another great impossible setup. The people of Northmont are planning to bury a time capsule, and everyone is putting different things in it. However, a man disappears and when the capsule is dug up the next day he is found within it.

The setup is great, but I think the solution is a slight letdown. It's a bit too mechanical and the killer had to do a whole bunch of stuff that seems... well, it's just a bit too much. Still, it's not a bad story for all that. The motive works, the setup is great, as I said, and all in all it's a pretty great story.

The final story, "...the Old Oak Tree", continues the winning streak. A film crew has come to Northmont to film some aerial scenes on a field outside the town. A stuntman jumps out of the plane with a parachute, but manages to land in a tree. And when Dr. Sam and everyone else reaches him, he is dead...

This was the very first Hawthorne story I read, and what a great introduction. The solution is perfect in its simplicity. As always with this type of revelation, one has to wonder why on earth the victim would help his killer the way he did, but I guess it's kind of a genre convention that we don't scrutinize it too closely. A killer story, nonetheless.


This is not the best of the Hawthorne collections - we'll get there - but it's still darn tooting good! Hoch manages to use quite varied impossible setups and solutions, so you never feel that you get the same story over and over, which is always a risk.Yes, it is obvious that there is a difference in quality between the lesser works and the great ones, and that difference is also bigger here than in Hoch's later Hawthorne stories.

Nevertheless, at this point I think I'll just make things easy for myself and include everything in my project. The stories really are good enough to my mind.

The Puzzle Doctor over at "In Search of the Classical Mystery Novel" had a quick look at this collection quite a few years ago: https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/diagnosis-impossible-the-problems-of-dr-sam-hawthorne-by-edward-d-hoch/


The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo - Clayton Rawson

This collection, expensive and not easy to come by, is nonetheless the best way to acquire these rare stories by Rawson. Actually, they were all originally published under the pseudonym Stuart Towne, but this volume is credited under Rawson's own name.

It's a lovely book published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, whose publications are admittedly quite expensive, but with publication of such rarities as these, they are true benefactors to all us mystery lovers.

This collection features the four novellas about Don Diavolo. All of them are very long - in fact, they're so long they could almost be called short novels. They are all divided into about fifteen chapters each.

After those four, we get five other pulp stories written by Stuart Towne. Three of them constitute a series of their own, about another magician protagonist, the enigmatic Mr. Mystery. The other two are regular hardboiled mysteries. Note that only the Don Diavolo mysteries feature true impossible crimes.

Rounding out this volume are several interesting introductions and prefaces about the author, the publication history of the stories and much more.

The first story is "Ghost of the Undead", probably the most "un-pulpy" of the stories here. After finishing his magic show, Don Diavolo is called on by a woman who wishes to speak with him. However, when he exits his dressing-room, the woman is lying dead in a room whose only exit was guarded, but somehow a bat is flying around in there.

Here we are introduced to Don Diavolo and his entire crew - his female assistants Pat and Mickey, technician Karl Hartz, jack-of-all-trades Chan Chandra Manchu, and of course newspaper columnist Woody Haynes and the ever more annoyed Inspector Church.

This story makes use of the vampire legends, but never succumbs to the supernatural, instead using these old legends to craft a wonderful backstory for the crime. Seeing that the story was published in a pulp, there are of course some gangster trappings, lots of guns, dim policemen and so on. But Towne never skimps on the logic. The explanation for the impossibility is grounded in reality, and the more outré pulp trappings only get to set the pace of the story. And it does have pace! A wonderful story.

Don Diavolo's next case is "Death out of Thin Air" which is a bit more pulpy. In it, a policeman is murdered inside Police HQ while on the trail of an Invisible Man. Inspector Church more or less witnesses the murder happen, but when he searches the murder room, he cannot see anyone there. And then we get treated to a couple of imaginative thefts, Don Diavolo gets shut into an airtight safe, and so on, and so forth. The pace never lets off.

In general, the explanations for the impossibilities here are also quite grounded and work fine. I am, however, a bit skeptical to some of the explanations for the Invisible Man bits. But on the whole this is great stuff again, there are just minor bits that I'm less enamoured of.

The next installment, "Claws of Satan", has a great locked room beginning. A circus owner has swindled Don Diavolo out of a magic trick invention, and of course Don decides to give him a piece of his mind. However, as soon as he enters the circus owner's office, Don sees that he is dead, but immediately gets hit over the head. And when he comes to the police are already knocking on the door - and Don is alone with the corpse!

In this story we're treated to more of the circus life - similarly to the concurrent Rawson novel "The Headless Lady". This more than makes up for the fact that the impossibility is more easily seen through than in the earlier stories. The fact that it is another pulp story with lots of pace and stuff happening all the time is probably necessary - if the reader just stops to think about the whole thing for a while, the explanation should be clear. But as I said, Towne never lets off and the energy sparkles and crackles the whole way through. So it's still very worth-while.

The final Diavolo story is "The Enchanted Dagger", where we get a traveller from the Far East bringing the titular dagger with him. But he is also shadowed by a shady Indian fellow, who enters his hotel room. The first chapter ends with a shootout. But, of course, not all is as it seems.

This is probably the most pulpy of the Diavolo stories. We have an Indian mystic who challenges Don Diavolo with his trick of vanishing right in front of people's eyes. I'm less pleased with the solution of this impossibility. It's a hokey trick that I personally don't want to see used to explain impossible disappearances, but tends to appear from time to time. Still, I had a lot of fun reading the story, so I won't complain too much.

After these great Don Diavolo stories, we get a one-off called "Stand in for a Kill". This is more of an adventure/thriller type story with a plot we've seen a million times by now - two murderers agree to switch victims.

So, not the most original thing. And the ending is a bit telegraphed, as well. The setting is well written, and we get to see another seedy part of New York in the 40s, but it's hardly enough to save the story.

The next story, "Mr Mystery", introduces Rawson's third magician detective. He is a mentalist who's doing a show at a hotel at the same time when a murder is committed. A small-time pickpocket is immediately suspected, but Mr. Mystery doesn't think he's the culprit.

And thus follow shenanigans all over the hotel with people sneaking in and out of rooms. You get the picture. However, it's still all very entertaining. Mr. Mystery, as opposed to Merlini or Diavolo, is a hard-hitter, so he gets into more scrapes than the other two. It is, however, just as fast paced as the Diavolo stories. On the whole a fun read.

The Mr. Mystery stories continue with "The Man with the Radio Mind". This time we get another one of those "two magicians challenge each other to do even more daring feats". In this case, Mr. Mystery's challenger, The Great Rajah, manages to solve a mystery for the police with his mental powers. But Mr. Mystery has his suspicions...

This is the lightest and also the shortest of the MM stories. There's never really a doubt about anything here. The only thing it's got going for itself is, again, the pace. A slight disappointment after the previous story.

The third and final MM story is "The Ace of Death", wherein someone falls down the elevator shaft of the hotel where Mr. Mystery is giving a show. Again Mr. Mystery's pickpocket friend is hotly suspected, so the magician has to do what he does best to get him out of the pickle.

This story is quite similar to the first MM story with lots of shenanigans in the hotel and having to save the pickpocket friend. But it's still different enough to stand on its own feet. Another story that is good fun.

The collection ends with the standalone "The Man with X-Ray Eyes", another story that is long enough to feature chapter divisions. The titular character is a man with amnesia who can predict when people will die. And our protagonist is a moody detective with a golden heart who has to find out how those predictions work - is the man with the memory loss just a confidence trickster, and what does he know about the crimes?

This is a hardboiled tale, and those are generally not to my tastes. But there is an energy and carefree quality to this story that I actually don't mind it too much. But it's not a fantastic story in any way. The explanation - or perhaps I should say non-explanation? - to the murder predictions is a thorough disappointment.


This collection is a bit of a mixed bag quality-wise. The Don Diavolo stories are all excellent or at least close to that. The five pulpier stories that round out the volume are less great, but at least the Mr. Mystery stories are well worth reading. Even if none of those five are true impossible crimes, because of the way they are written, they still come close enough that an aficionado will probably get some enjoyment from them.

If you didn't already guess, I will include all four Don Diavolo stories in my collection of impossible mystery short stories. They are all of top quality.

The final two Diavolo stories are discussed by TomCat here: http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.se/2017/03/theres-no-such-thing-as-magic.html


No Killer Has Wings - Arthur Porges

Arthur Porges might just be the most unsung hero in the impossible mystery genre. Carr and Rawson are always mentioned as the towering giants, Edward D. Hoch and Bill Pronzini get mentions as the men who carried their legacy into the modern era, and Paul Halter is hailed as the modern, foreign alternative.

But Porges, who together with these five is the writer who wrote most impossible mysteries ever, gets nary a mention. This has to stop. There are definite problems with some of Porges's works - we'll get to those - but someone who has written more than 50 impossible mysteries cannot be as neglected as he is.

A sign of this neglect is the paucity of available works by this prolific writer - because he wrote not only impossible mysteries, no, he dabbled in almost every genre. Or perhaps that should be "was". Because over the last decade or so, Richard Simms, one of his greatest fans, has ensured that stories by Porges get published for all our enjoyment.

"No Killer Has Wings" is one of those collections. It features all the stories Porges wrote about Dr. Joel Hoffman, pathologist and solver of impossible mysteries, six in total. One thing about Porges is that the solution of many of his impossible crimes rely on one scientific detail. This is more evident in his Cyriac Skinner Grey stories, but it shines through somewhat here as well.

The first story of this volume is "Dead-Drunk" wherein a man is found in a coma inside his own home. Most everyone believe that this is due to a diabetic coma, but Lieutenant Ader has some niggling doubt and brings the case to Hoffman.

This is one of those stories that will be hard to solve for the layman reader. The reason for the coma is one that generally only those who come into contact with the agent will even know about. Still, it is a nice enough introduction to Dr. Hoffman, who is an interesting person in his own right.

Next is "Horse-Collar Homicide". This has a crazy setup with a family where the pater familias drives everyone crazy with his ideas and opinions. Of course, one fine day he drops dead during one of their family games - there are however no traces of what killed him, so it gets written down as natural death.

Again, the solution to the impossibility is somewhat obscure, though not as hard to get as in the previous story. Porges has an interesting tendency to create stories only to ensure that we get a situation where a particular murder method is possible, and this is definitely one such example.

"Circle in the Dust" is the only non-impossibility featured here. This time it's an old lady who gets hit over the head with a blunt instrument, and Dr. Hoffman has to figure out who would have motive to kill an old lady with no valuable possessions.

Hoffman blunders around a bit here, searching for physical clues, until he finds another fairly obscure fact which pins it on the murderer. The motive seems pretty flimsy to me, to be honest. But some of the clues are very well-handled by Porges.

If you know one story by Porges, chances are that it's "No Killer Has Wings", since it's appeared in the odd anthology. Another pater familias is killed here. This time he is battered to death with his own walking-stick on a secluded beach with only his nephew's footprints leading to and from the victim. Dr. Hoffman gets called in just to make sure whether it is in fact the nephew who committed the murder, and if not, how it could have been done.

The solution is simply great. It ties together everything in a neat little bow. It also has the advantage of not relying of some obscure fact or anything like that. Anyone who reads this can figure it out - if they're clever enough!

"A Puzzle in the Sand" is more or less a direct follow-up to the previous story. In fact, it uses the exact same beach setting. The house from the former story has been rented by a new family, and again the head of the family is found dead on the beach, and only one person's footprints lead to the victim and back again. The main difference is that he has been shot.

Lieutenant Ader is understandably jittery about a case which is almost a carbon copy of a previous one, and Dr. Hoffman gets to strut his stuff again. The solution is quite different here, which is hardly that strange seeing that this is a shooting instead of blunt trauma. Porges lets the killer get off without a trial here, and it has to be said that in several of the stories here he has some very different endings to the ones we're all used to.

We finish off with "Birds of One Feather", the shortest story here. In this case, a man is found dead in his car through cyanide poisoning. But why is his beloved parakeet also along in the car, and why is the bird dead?

This is an awesome murder method. I got the inclination to jump up and shout "yeah!" when I read the explanation. I'm also quite convinced that no murderer ever would try his hand at something like this. So yeah, it's awesome and improbable to the extreme. Still, awesome outweighs improbable.


Some of Porges's writing tics are in evidence here - obscure facts, a tendency not to end his cases "properly", and several others. But compared with some of his other stories, the Hoffman stories seem more well-rounded. They are also a bit longer than, say, the Cyriac Skinner Grey stories, which allows him to get in more background.

I'll be using "Horse-Collar" and the final three stories for my project. They are the most well-rounded and solvable of the stories. I think the first story works as an impossible story as well, but it's just a bit too hard to actually solve it, and thus can be a bit of a disappointment.

Here's what TomCat had to say about the Dr. Hoffman mysteries over on Beneath the Stains of Time: http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.se/2017/09/the-problems-of-dr-joel-hoffman.html


Carpenter and Quincannon - Bill Pronzini

There is a nice little foreword by the author about how this series about two private detectives in the late 1800s, one man and one woman, came about. Since the publication of the short story collection Pronzini has continued the series with several novels written together with his wife Marcia Muller.

C&Q is a series with a little bit of everything. There's regular mysteries, thrillers, hardboiled stuff, adventure stories, and the thing that interests us most here: impossible crimes. This makes for varied reading, which is generally a good thing. Again, it's Crippen & Landru we have to thank for this book.

After Pronzini's foreword, we dive directly into "No Room at the Inn", wherein John Quincannon is in hot pursuit after a criminal on horseback in the middle of winter. He arrives at a secluded inn, but after having stabled his horse he cannot find anyone there.

This is the shortest story of the collection and can be seen as an appetizer. There's not many deductions being made here, it's mainly an adventure story with Quincannon following and trying to apprehend his prey. And there's no appearance by Sabina Carpenter here.

"Burgade's Crossing" is quite similar, to be honest. This time, Quincannon arrives in the titular city to apprehend a known criminal. The difference is that someone tries to murder the man he is after, which means that suddenly Quincannon needs to find another criminal as well.

There's more mystery here and Quincannon gets to show off both as a man of action as well as man of deduction. Sadly, again Carpenter hardly gets a mention which is sort of annoying given that she is a titular character.

"The Cloud Cracker" remedies the somewhat similar tone of the stories so far by giving us an impossible crime! Again, Quincannon arrives in a town to investigate a shady character - in this case it is one of those wonderful Western swindlers. This guy has promised a whole town that he will be able to make rain. Some of the town's citizens get wary when nothing happens, and one day, when they are doing their preparations for the "cloud cracking" the man is apparently killed by one of the farmers inside a locked building.

The impossibility isn't very hard to see through, but it's still a fine story with colourful characters. Again, hardly any Carpenter here...

But in "Lady One-Eye" she's finally present! What we get here is a story where a saloon owner has hired C&Q to investigate whether the gambler Lady One-Eye is cheating in his establishment, and also because she and her husband have received a threatening letter.

This is another story that is heavily reliant on Western atmosphere. Saloons, gambling, guns, you name it. But the mystery is nothing to sniff at either. There are some twists and turns along the way and it all comes together quite nicely in the end. And seeing that Carpenter gets to join in here, it's also nice to see her contribute towards the solution.

In "Coney Game" an old enemy of Quincannon, Long Nick Darrow, has recently been released from prison and is now printing false money in San Francisco. So now Quincannon needs to find Darrow before someone puts a bullet in him.

After some more regular mysteries we're now back in the thriller/adventure setting. Or maybe we could simply call it a hardboiled mystery. Quincannon gets to skulk around in dark alleys following fairly obvious leads and getting shot at. Not really my thing.

"The Desert Limited" is the name of a train which Quincannon and Carpenter are travelling on. On it, they encounter a well-known criminal, and they convince the train master to call the sheriffs to ensure that the criminal gets arrested at the next stop. But then he disappears completely...

This is more like it. As you've probably surmised we're back in impossible territory. The solution to the impossibility is not all that, unfortunately. Carpenter manages to solve it through a bit of coincidence. Still, it's nice to see her do some of the heavy lifting again.

We continue the impossibilities in "The Horseshoe Nail". This is another Quincannon solo story where he is tracking a guy who's stolen some jewels and is now holed up in a lumberjack camp. Quincannon manages to get a job with the work crew, but one morning the thief is found dead in his cabin. It looks like suicide, but Quincannon has other ideas.

This is a good impossibility. The solution is quite simple, but also quite elegant. Quincannon shows off his talent for detective work.

"Medium Rare" follows, and we get our third impossible crime in a row. Here, C&Q have been hired by a banker to try to prove that a medium that has impressed his wife is just a charlatan. So they join a seance, but during the seance the medium is killed though everyone else were holding hands.

I was a little bit disappointed by the revelation of the killer here, because I thought it a bit obvious. However, the rest of the story makes up for it. The explanations of the miracles during the seance are fine, and the whole setup works nicely.

The final story, "The Highbinders", is also the longest one. Here, we're firmly in adventure thriller territory. Quincannon is trying to find a young attorney with an opium habit. But when he is carrying him home, someone puts a bullet in his quarry.

This is not really a mystery. It's set in Chinatown, so there are lots of sinister Chinamen, disappearances of corpses, tongs and triads, and whatnot. It's all a bit hokey. If you like films like "Big Trouble in Little China", I guess you'll enjoy it quite a bit. I know I did...


Like the Peter Godfrey volume, this collection has a bit of everything for the mystery reader. You probably won't like everything here, but at the same time chances are there'll definitely be something you like.

Quincannon is a compelling character (even though his constant pining for Carpenter gets a bit wearisome), while Carpenter is more of a mystery - mainly due to the fact that she is only present in about half the stories. (I haven't followed the later novels so I don't know how they fare in this respect.)

As for the impossibilities, they're all good and varied enough that I'll include them all. That means that "Cloud Cracker", "Desert Limited", "Horseshoe Nail" and "Medium Rare" will join the stories I've mentioned previously here on the blog.

TomCat has some nice words to say about this collection here: http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.se/2011/11/back-off-everyone-theyre-professionals.html


The Newtonian Egg - Peter Godfrey

Peter Godfrey had a run of short stories published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from the 50s on. They all feature his detective Rolf Le Roux, by one and all called "Oom Rolf". In this collection, we get all these stories as well as a couple that were only published in Godfrey's native South Africa.

Not all stories are impossible crimes - in fact, in the stricter sense, there are only two of them here. But Godfrey had a fertile imagination, and there are some interesting ideas in these stories that make them well worth recommending for the discerning mystery reader. Another fine collection from Crippen & Landru.

The first story of the collection is the title tale, "The Newtonian Egg". It is one of the minor classics of the impossible crime genre, and I'd say thoroughly deserved. In it, a bedridden man in a hospital is served a boiled egg for breakfast, but after having cracked the shell and bitten into the egg, the man dies from poisoning.

A minor complaint is that the motive is quite flimsy. One has to wonder if a presumptive murderer wouldn't actually check everything first before committing this crime. But as I said, that's a minor quibble. Otherwise, this works nicely. The whole setup with the discussion in the hospital is great, the characterisation works and the solution to the impossibility is excellent in its simplicity.

"The Fifth Dimension" is one of those stories that feature a serial killer matching his wits with the police by sending them cryptic messages. As you might imagine from that description, there's no impossible crime here.

In a short afterword, Godfrey explains some of his clues in the story, and it has to be said that he plays very fair with the reader. It's arguable that one has to be well-read in the mystery genre to correctly interpret the clues, but again that's a minor quibble. A good read. (And that's said by someone who doesn't really like this type of story.)

We have another serial killer story in "Kill and Tell", which is the only story to feature a narrator, - the secretary of a man who seems to fit all the clues and evidence that the police have managed to gather on the serial killer in question.

As an experiment having a narrator works well here. There's however a dearth of characters in the story, which makes it fairly easy to see through. Not as good as the predecessor.

In "And Turn the Hour" a man is found with amnesia that in some way might be related to a crime, and the man does not want to be cured from this amnesia.

An effective, yet bewildering story, where the author uses the amnesia as a storytelling device that lets the reader experience the same hopeless feeling of the amnesia victim, before Oom Rolf comes to solve the whole thing. This particular reader was not completely taken with the story - I think the bewilderment at the beginning affected my reading experience too much.

"The Angel of Death" is described by the author as an "atmosphere story", which is a good description. A man is found killed on the docks one foggy night, and the police round up everyone who is present at the time, and then they need to figure out who committed the murder.

There is a dying message featured here. Dying messages are inherently a bit absurd - it's generally hard for the author to justify why the dying message is so opaque. (Obviously it has to be for the story to be effective as a mystery.) But if the reader can accept the fact that it's all a bit artificil, this dying clue is quite good indeed. The whole setting in the fog plays out well, and it's all really a rather good read.

If the former story was a fairly obvious homage to Ellery Queen's writing (the master of dying messages), "Time out of Mind" seems to be the same with its Alice-in-Wonderland feeling. The whole story is set in a mental institution where one of the nurses is found murdered.

The Alice feeling mainly comes from the different witness statements we get from the inmates at the mental institution. Godfrey handles this sensitive part well, and uses the different voices well to enhance the mystery. The final clue is well hidden, even though the murderer perhaps isn't.

"The Face of the Sphinx" follows. It's a definite change of pace with gang wars, racial issues and the search for a man who threatens several people with a knife and then robs them.

Not really my cup of tea, this. Yeah, it is in fact a fair play mystery, even though the description above doesn't indicate anything of the sort. But it just didn't really sit well with me for some reason. I don't know if it's the dichotomy between the subject matter and the fair play mystery genre.

Moving on to "Little Fat Man". A man comes to the police complaining about having been followed for a very long time by a man he only knows as a "little fat man". The police (and Rolf Le Roux) have to find out how the fellow has managed to follow him all over the world and why.

The trick in this story is pretty old hat. It's a storyline we've seen many other authors do, and the experienced mystery reader will know after two pages what's going to happen. So, on the whole this was a bit disappointing.

The next story, however, is the oft anthologised "The Flung-Back Lid" (which is a rewritten and somewhat longer version of the story "Out of this World"). A man gets on a cablecar and is then seen dead while travelling down from the Table Mountain.

A good story, this. I think it's well deserved to have been anthologised so often (in both versions). This is probably the better version. The main drawback is if you think hard about the impossible situation it's rather easy to come to the correct conclusion, and in turn spot the murderer. But that's mainly because there's only one solution possible. The story still features a very good impossible situation and, as I said, is a well deserved classic.

The final story of the collection is "Perfumes of Arabia", set in the theatre world. The star performer in a play is battered to death by a man with some kind of blunt instrument when coming out from his hotel.

This is maybe the most "normal" mystery story of the collection. We have the whole shebang of an investigation with interviews, a search for clues and so on. Perhaps the only thing that makes it stand out is the murderer and the motive. It's complicated enough that the whole part where Oom Rolf explains takes up almost one fourth of the whole story. I'm not sure I like the revelation of the murderer.


This is for the most part a really good collection of stories. It has a couple of true classics ("Newtonian Egg", "Flung-Back Lid", "The Fifth Dimension" and "Time out of Mind"), and also a couple of clunkers ("Little Fat Man", "The Face of the Sphinx"). If you like variety in your mysteries, there's a lot of that to be found here.

The two main impossible mysteries here ("Newtonian", "Flung-Back") are the ones I will use in my project.


The Mysteries of Reverend Dean - Hal White

Hal White is an "amateur" writer and this is more or less a self-published book with several locked room short stories. Well, it does have a real publishing house, but that publisher is generally a publisher of Christian works, not mysteries, so it still feels a bit off the beaten path.

It was published in 2008, and I've not really heard anything from the author since then, so I don't know if his imagination was depleted by writing these stories, or if he's simply chosen to focus his energies elsewhere.

This short story collection is structured a bit like an episodic novel by including a prologue, dividing each of the short stories into chapters, and trying to carry on an overarching narrative of Reverend Dean's trials and tribulations after retiring.

Reverend Dean is an interesting enough character, but on the whole characterisation is White's main problem. In each of these stories the characters are paper-thin, and it's dead easy to spot the villain of the story. It may be that White knows his own shortcomings here and that is the reason for not including very many characters, but that just compounds the problem - if there were more characters, at least it would be a little bit harder to spot the culprit.

The first "real" story of the collection - after the prologue - is "Murder at an Island Mansion". This story actually features three impossible murders - one man found dead on the beach with wet sand surrounding him and yet no footprints, a woman found dead in a room with wet paint all over the floor and, again, no footprints, and finally another man found dead in a muddy pond with no footprints, for the third time.

The solution to the impossibilities is actually not bad at all. The first murder admittedly demands that the reader accepts some very exceptional gymnastic talent from the murderer, while the second fares somewhat better in that regard. The third murder, however, entirely depends on misdirection from the murderer. It only works because the story has the characters act the way they do, if anyone had done anything different it would have been a disaster for the murderer. Still, somehow it all works anyway. It's a pretty good start to the collection.

In the next story "Murder from the Fourth Floor" we're introduced to the only other recurring character - policeman Mark Small. White tries to give him a bit of characterisation, but on the whole, he's nothing more than a blank Watson to Reverend Dean's Holmes. In this story we get an impossible crime where first a young man is almost shot and killed from a fourth floor flat, and when the flat is searched a murdered woman is found inside.

On the whole, this story worked somewhat worse than its predecessor. White has the characters do some contortions just to get the action to work, and even Dean has problems answering why the murderer did what he did. The story is also overlong, which brings down the pacing.

In "Murder on a Cabin Cruise" we're treated to an impossible murder on a boat. A man is thrown overboard, and later a woman from the group he was travelling with is found dead in her cabin.

This is also the story where White's Christian leanings start to take too much space in the story. At this point I have to mention that I don't like religious proselytising - it's a red blanket to me. And here it gets too much. I get that the protagonist is a priest, and the proportion was all right in the first two stories, but I do get a bit eye-rolly here. It doesn't help that this has a fairly unimaginative solution to the crime. It's based on something that most of us will have already encountered in other, better impossible crime stories. And again, the story is much too long.

"Murder at the Lord's Table" continues the Christian themes, unfortunately. Okay, it's set in the church itself, so I guess it's unavoidable. It's just a pity that it follows the most overtly proselytising story in the collection. In this case we have a priest being killed by poison during communion, in front of several other people, and yet no one can explain how he was poisoned.

Again, the solution is a bit old hat. It's more or less one of those stories where only one person could have logically done it, and also turns out to be the baddie. On the plus side, the story is not as long as the previous ones and has better pacing. I like the ending denouement as well.

"Murder in a Sealed Loft" is quite possibly the best story of the collection. In it, a woman is found murdered in her apartment while her husband and two friends were outside the entire day working in the yard.

The story moves at a faster clip, being again one of the storter stories in the book, and the solution is well thought through. There's some direct cluing going on here, and actually some misdirection as well, making it harder than usual to spot who will turn out to be the criminal. Well worth reading.

The collection rounds off with "Murder at the Fall Festival", wherein a man is found dead, nailed to a board in a locked storage room where people have been outside the entire afternoon.

The whole impossible situation is bonkers in all possible ways. It's sort of awesome and super stupid at the same time. There is absolutely no way that any murderer would choose to kill someone in this way, so expect no realism. On the other hand, it's kinda fun to see an author go all out for once. I don't know if I'd recommend the story, but it was fun to read.


It's hard to dump on a modern author who's obviously got a lot of love and respect for the impossible mystery genre. But there are a lot of problems here. I've already mentioned some here: the paper thin characterisation, the much too long stories, the all too permeating religiousness - the latter is probably less of a problem to other readers.

However, there's one other problem I haven't mentioned and that is editing. I truly wonder if there was any editor involved before publication of this book. It's not that there's a lot of problems with spelling, punctuation or grammar - no, those seem fine to me. However, there's a problem with extraneous material in the stories.

I get the reason for the prologue. It sets the table by having the Reverend retire. All good and fine. Then the first short story begins, and we get a chapter which is kind of a follow-up to the prologue. It also introduces the Reverend's niece Susan. And then... she disappears and is never used again, not only in that story, but never in any of the stories. The whole first chapter of the story is entirely redundant. White might have wanted that part to show us more of Reverend Dean's surroundings, but why on earth have it part of the first story? It would have been infinitely better to add it to the prologue instead!

There are other similar problems in the other stories where some material is quite extraneous to the mysteries. I've chosen to include two of the stories from this book in my own project - "Murder at an Island Mansion" and "Murder in a Sealed Loft", but I've had to make some judicious edits in my translations. As the stories are, within the episodic collection, it just about works, but as single short stories, if taken separately, it becomes bewildering.

Over on The Invisible Event, J. J. seems to agree with me (or if it's the other way round) on the stories in this collection: https://theinvisibleevent.com/2016/12/03/17-adventures-in-self-publishing-the-mysteries-of-reverend-dean-ss-2008-by-hal-white/


The Great Merlini - Clayton Rawson

As I've mentioned earlier, one of my previous projects was to ensure that all short stories by several authors were translated into Swedish. One of those authors were Clayton Rawson, and this is mainly a rewrite of the foreword I created for the e book I made.

Yes, I am crazy. Deal with it.

Clayton Rawson is one of the more prominent figures in the mystery subgenre called impossible crimes. His colleague John Dickson Carr ranked him as one of the six best mystery writers ever, and Fred Danny (one half of the author firm Ellery Queen) called him "one of the topflight mystifiers in the whole bloodhound business, a favorite with plain fans and fancy connoisseurs alike".

Under his own name, Rawson only produced four novels, of which several are hailed as cornerstones in the genre, and the twelve short stories that are collected in this volume. Apart from that he used the pseudonym Stuart Towne (which he took from one of the characters in his own novel "The Headless Lady") four novellas about the illusionist Don Diavolo and a handful of shorter stories closer to the hardboiled genre.

All stories published under Rawson's own name feature the magician Merlini as the main character. In this volume we get a large variation of stories: some very short stories with a challenge to the reader (an idea mainly developed by Ellery Queen which was somewhat popular during the Golden Age) and they can rather be described as pure puzzle stories where the reader has to find the answer to a specific situation; and a number of longer stories where Rawson has the opportunity to develop the impossible situations.

The former category were all published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM) during the 40s and 50s, and the solutions were published one or two issues later. Fred Dannay said that Rawson "conceived and executed his little posers with a subtle blend of malice aforethought and loving kindness".

First we have "The Clue of the Tattooed Man", wherein a snake charmer has been strangled while her door was watched by several persons, all of whom swear that only one person entered the room. But Merlini knows that he didn't do it.

Next is "The Clue of the Broken Legs". Producer Jorge Lasko, with both legs in a cast, is found murdered. Four people are in the house, which one is the killer?

"The Clue of the Missing Motive" follows next. A man is murdered in the park, and the weapon is found in one of the houses bordering on that park. But which one of the inhabitants could have a motive to kill the unkown man?

These stories are generally just brain teasers, where we need to find the important clue. I find them fun to read, but perhaps not the most interesting when judged as stories. The first two are at least fairly clever, but the third one should be quite obvious to the seasoned mystery reader.

"From Another World" was ranked as the second best short story in EQMM 1948. It is also quite interesting, since the whole premise of the story was a challenge between Rawson and the aforementioned Carr to write a story where the impossible crime takes place inside a room which has been sealed off with paper around every entrance. (Carr's solution can be found in the novel "He Wouldn't Kill Patience".)

This is one of the cleverest solutions I've seen, and the story is a firm favourite of mine. The misdirection used by the killer is simple but efficient, and it's really one of those "Of course!" moments for the reader. Good stuff.

In this collection you'll also find the short story "Merlini and the Photographic Clues". Originally, this was published as a jigsaw puzzle in 1949 where the story was printed on the back side, and where you had to finish the jigsaw to create the picture which is shown in the story and is used as the definitive clue to solve the mystery. The jigsaw puzzle text was rewritten into a regular story in 1969.

The story is an impossible crime in the sense that it's an unbreakable alibi. It is quite short, and the photographic clue is actually quite well made. I do think that everyone should have been able to interpret it correctly, not just Merlini.

"Off the Face of the Earth" follows thereafter. This is another story that received an award from EQMM's readers, in this case it was ranked as the best story of 1949. Like the previous longer story, it features newspaperman Ross Harte as the narrator. And yet another similarity is that this story is also a challenge between Carr and Rawson. In this case the impossibility is a man who disappears without a trace from a phone box guarded by police.

I think Rawson's solution here is cleverer and more plausible than the one Carr came up with in his short story "Scotland Yard's Christmas". It makes rather good use of the fact that Merlini is a magician, and the misdirection used by Merlini when he wants to reenact the problem is elegant yet simple.

Then we have another three stories with a challenge to the reader. First comes "Merlini and the Lie Detector". A film producer is killed and there are two suspects present. Which one is telling the truth and which one is lying?

"Merlini and the Vanished Diamonds" comes next. A magician is accused of being a jewel smuggler, and yet the police have searched him and the cabin he was travelling in. Now Merlini has to find out where those diamonds are hidden.

The final story of this second trio of shorter stories is "Merlini and the Sound Effects Murder". A man is murdered, but the murder is caught on tape. However, the only suspect has a waterproof alibi. So Merlini needs to break it down somehow.

Again, these three stories are simply brainteasers, mainly fun and games. The second and third are both fairly good, while the first of the three is a bit too coincidental. It would probably be fairly hard to prosecute someone based on just that single clue...

"Nothing Is Impossible" is a longer story, wherein it seems that aliens somehow have managed to enter a locked room and killed a man in there. To be honest, this is one of those stories where the culprit is fairly obvious - the whole thing is to find out how he managed to swing it. There's some similarities to Bill Pronzini's classic impossibility "Proof of Guilt".

The explanation is quite fun, but also pretty stupid, at least the bit about aliens. The rest seems quite plausible, but one has to wonder why the murderer would commit murder in that way. I'd like to add here that I enjoy having Ross Harte as the narrator. He's sort of an Archie Goodwin type of character and adds a bit of fun to the proceedings.

Harte is featured in "Miracles - All in the Day’s Work" as well. In this story, Merlini explains how a man could have been killed in his office while a policeman was sitting outside the door the entire time and no one entered or exited the office during that whole time.

Another likeable story. The explanation to the impossibility is very nice, very simple.

The final story of the collection is "The World’s Smallest Locked Room", a shorter and slighter story where I question the term "locked room". Another producer (did Rawson have something against that profession?) is killed sitting at a cafe table with two companions.

I just don't see where this becomes an impossible crime. It's a good story otherwise, if maybe a tad short, but to call it a locked room story (or an impossible crime) seems to be a misrepresentation of that genre.


This is on the whole a very good collection of stories. Rawson had very good ideas and in the short story format he never loses his way, the way he did at times in his novels. It's a must have for any impossible crime aficionado.

For my own part, I will add the four longer stories ("Off the Face", "Nothin Is Impossible", "Miracles" and "From Another World") to my own project. They are among the best stuff you can find in the genre.

On Beneath the Stains of Time, TomCat has a review of this title: http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.se/2016/04/magicians-bouquet.html


The Duel of Shadows - Vincent Cornier

I remember reading "The Duel of Shadows" in an anthology and being quite taken with the story. I found that it was a really interesting way of solving an impossibility. And therefore I had no hesitation in picking up this collection (another one published by Crippen & Landru) when it was published a couple of years ago.

Vincent Cornier seems to have been an interesting man, judging from the introduction by Mike Ashley. His stories are never commonplace, always offering something outré. This collection only features those short stories where Barnabas Hildreth is the detective, which means that one of his better known impossible stories, "The Courtyard of the Fly", is not found here. Still, most of his other impossible works are here. Not that there are too many of them, which was a bit disappointing to me.

We're introduced to Hildreth in "The Stone Ear", where his uncle is killed holding a medieval goblet, right in front of Hildreth and our newspaper narrator. A fairly short story which mainly serves as an introduction to Hildreth, it relies perhaps a bit too heavily on a language clue which seems somewhat farfetched - something Cornier is prone too, as we'll see. There is no impossibility here, nor any real suspense in finding out who the killer is. But at least it's short.

Hildreth's next case is "The Brother of Heaven", which is an impossible crime story. A Chinese triad member is found murdered in an old warehouse, but there are no footsteps leading to the corpse even though the floor is very dusty.

The impossibility is solved in a somewhat trite manner, reminiscent of stories from the early 1900s. My feeling is that Cornier didn't really focus on the impossibility as such, instead opting for a focus on the more adventurous bits about the Triad and their goings-on. The story feels rather dated to a modern reader.

Next we come to "The Silver Quarrel". This is an adventure story, a treasure hunt in fact, where Hildreth gets to solve old clues to find the treasure. There's hardly a villain in this story, and again, the story harks back to mysteries of old times.

The disappointments continue with "The Throat of Green Jasper". This time it's an Egyptian curse, and the hoary old cliches start to pile up. (Yes, yes, okay, they may not quite have become cliches yet when Cornier wrote the stories.) We get some nonsense about reincarnation and then this reader's brain starts to turn off.

But here comes "Duel of Shadows" to the rescue, which is fortunate, because it's been fairly rough going so far. In this story, which is only partly an impossibility, because the reader is actually always aware of what happened (a man is shot while sitting alone in front of a fireplace by an 18th century bullet) - the only question is how it could happen.

This is a good read. I'm not entirely sure the science of it all works, but it really is imaginative. We get to follow Hildreth as he puzzles together all the clues that we've already been presented in the beginning of the story - AND there's a diagram. That's always a plus point.

In "The Catastrophe in Clay" a vagrant disappears and then turns up again, dead and somehow transformed into some kind of stone statue. Could it be a curse that killed him and transformed him?

The story is only tangentially impossible, the main thing here is Cornier's fertile imagination and trying to work out how he's going to get this all to fit together in the end. Again, I'm not sure about the science here, but Cornier's chutzpah is something to behold. A fun read, whatever you say.

I don't actually know how to describe "The Mantle That Laughed", except that it's crazy. In this case we have a number of valuable objects that when handled seem to kill the person touching them. There's never really a mystery, since we find everything out in real time.

Again, Cornier goes far out on the scientific limb to produce some esoteric fiction that probably wouldn't work in the real world. Either you just sit back and admire his ideas, or you do what I did - roll your eyes and scoff. It's not an impossible story, though it could have easily been if Cornier had wanted to go that way.

"The Tabasheeran Pearls" is more of the same. The main difference from the former story is that, as the title indicates, here we have pearls doing the evil deed. We also have some Japanese background bits and a vain British lady. And again this reader is starting to get a bit fed up with this whole "based on science but really just a bunch of tosh" shtick.

So, moving on to "The Gilt Lily", I pricked up my ears when I found that this was in fact an impossible crime story, wherein a high mucketymuck in the Secret Service gets papers stolen from his room while he himself is in it. Unfortunately, this is a really poor story. Cliches about exotic drugs and European princes and princesses abound and a lord who is really a villain about town at night, and the solution is extraordinarily trite.

The next to last story, "The Monster", is at least somewhat different from the preceding stuff. Cornier tells us about a pair of twins where one of the boys is never seen by anyone at close range. Then people start to die, and gossip starts to accuse that twin...

And in this case, instead of relying on cliches, the writer actually manages to use them to trick the reader. However, he does so by introducing something that's arguably even worse. It's really just a Gothic short story set in more modern times. Good if you like that kind of thing, but only tangentially a mystery.

The collection ends with "O Time, In Your Flight". A short-ish story where an old Jewish jeweller is killed in his home and the only possible suspect has an ironclad alibi. This has none of the preceding stories overreliance on imagination, nor any supernatural trappings. Instead this is the most realistic and prosaic of Cornier's Hildreth stories. And it's also quite a success. The explanation for the alibi is really good, relying on something that would actually work in real life. Okay, in real life the police would probably have worked it out on their own, but that's only a minor quibble.


Cornier isn't for everyone. At least, he isn't for me. First, I'd hoped there would be more impossible mysteries here, since that was what I thought he was known for. Before reading this I'd seen Swedish translations of "Duel", "O Time", "Tabasheeran Pearls", "Gilt Lily" and "The Brother of Heaven" of which four are impossible - unfortunately those were also the only ones in the collection...

Generally, Cornier either bases his stories on old cliches or on some kind of scientific fact that he turns inside out in order to produce a mystery out of it. Sometimes the stories feature both things at the same time.

On the whole, I found this collection to be a disappointment. I'll only be using two stories for my own impossible project - "Duel of Shadows" and "O Time, In Your Flight", which to me are heads and shoulders above the rest.

TomCat discusses this collection on his excellent blog Beneath the Stains of Time here: http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.se/2013/05/the-case-book-of-black-monk.html


The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant - C. Daly King

This volume was published by Crippen & Landru, a wonderful publishing firm for short story collections by many renowned authors in the mystery field. The best thing they're doing is publishing several collections by Edward D. Hoch (and we'll return to some of those later on).

In this case, what we have is essentially an expanded edition of the original short story collection "The Curious Mr. Tarrant". King wrote a couple of other stories about Tarrant later on which were exhumed for this complete collection.

The collection begins with the eight stories that were in the original collection of Tarrant stories, adds two stories published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, another story that was discovered after the author's death, and finally a story published in a SF magazine under the name of Jeremiah Phelan (the narrator of these stories). One extra point to the collection is the way it's actually written so it tells a full(er) story about the characters. You can follow Tarrant and Phelan as they develop as characters.

King is otherwise most famous for having written some books that are notoriously hard to find - at least at humane prices. I have "Obelists Fly High" in my TBR pile, and that is the only one I've seen re-released. A pity.

The first story of the collection is "The Episode of the Codex' Curse". In it, our narrator Jerry Phelan is convinced to guard a recently found codex in a museum at night. In the middle of the night, the codex disappears, while Mr. Tarrant instead appears in the room where Jerry is sitting guard.

As you see, there is no murder in this first story, it's simply a miraculous vanishing. The explanation is very good, plausible and workable. Jerry does come across as a bit of a nitwit at times - not only when it comes to the investigation, but also the bits of his character he reveals through his narration. One drawback is the very obvious culprit. I defy anyone to miss who it is.

Next in the book we get "The Episode of the Tangible Illusion" where a woman is haunted by mysterious visions and sounds in her tiny house. This is rather worse than the previous story. Again it's utterly obvious who the culprit is, and I find the explanations of the hauntings rather implausible But at least Jerry gains a wife, so I guess that's all right.

"The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem" is probably the most anthologised story in this collection. It is also the first to include an impossible murder, where a woman is found killed in an artist's studio. The artist himself has disappeared from the locked and sealed studio even though it is known that he was there previously.

As you can probably guess from the set-up there isn't much question about who the perpetrator is. The main thing here is to find out how he could disappear from the sealed room. The solution is somewhat technical but certainly workable. However, the author does have to let the story go through some unlikely contortions in order for a second murder to happen. Not the finest hour of New York's finest.

Another story that's seen some appearances in anthologies is "The Episode of Torment IV". In it, several people die after having jumped off a motor boat in the middle of a lake.

I've seen this story given some praise, for instance by Edward D. Hoch in his introduction to the volume. I really don't see why. This is the highest order of hokum and so easily seen through. It may be that my hopes were set too high through Hoch's praise, but I was thoroughly disappointed by such a cliched explanation.

Next is "The Episode of the Headless Horrors". This is a fairly grisly story where several people are found with severed heads after having disappeared on a stretch of a road that was watch at both ends.

This is somewhat better than the previous story, but still not entirely convincing. The motive for murder seems rather out there, and again there is no question about who the criminal is. There are some writing tics that start to get annoying here as well.

So it's good that we now come to "The Episode of the Vanishing Harp". It's the longest story in the collection, at least double the length of any other story here, and it presents a lovely problem. A man relates to Mr Tarrant how his legendary old Irish harp has suddenly vanished from an entirely sealed room that no one except himself has access to. Of course, there is also an old legend and a curse connected with the harp which threatens the happiness of the man and his wife.

The setup is great, as I said, and the explanation lives up to that setup. I'll admit that again, King has trouble writing suspects that seem plausible (again it's really easy to spot the baddie), but the increased length gives King the opportunity to at least weave in a couple of more characters and a bit more background to the case. The solution to where the harp has been is a real humdinger.

The final two stories of the original collection have a science fiction or perhaps supernatural slant which feels a bit outré. First of these two is "The Episode of the Man with Three Eyes", which introduces the character Monsieur Hor who seems to have some clairvoyant characteristics. In this story, Tarrant's Japanese manservant Katoh is suspected of having killed a spy in a nightclub because he was the only one who was closeby and had the opportunity. Tarrant steps in to prove Katoh's innocence.

The story felt a bit slight, particularly following the great "Vanishing Harp". I also felt that the introduction of Monsieur Hor was to the detriment of the stories. However, without that we wouldn't have had the story "The Episode of the Final Bargain".

On the other hand, that story is the pits, so Monsieur Hor can go. In it, Tarrant's beloved (and Jerry's sister) suddenly falls ill from some kind of supernatural disease and Tarrant has to do something equally supernatural to try to save her from certain death. Everything is just silly and stupid and this reader rather lost patience with the whole thing here.

After the stories from the original collection we get a later story where for some reason King had decided to change the Japanese Katoh into the Philippinese Hido. (Yes, we all know the reason, the story was written during WWII.) However, Hido is Katoh in all but name.

"The Episode of the Little Girl Who Wasn't There" is a complete armchair detective story. Tarrant and Jerry are listening to the radio when they hear news about an actress who has disappeared from a thoroughly guarded room. Tarrant reasons his way through a couple of different solutions before settling on the correct one.A lovely little story after the great preceding disappointments. The solution is fairly easy to spot, but it all fits together nicely.

"The Episode of the Sinister Invention" follows. This is a Sherlock Holmes story where the names have simply been changed to Tarrant et al. It actually makes for a rather fun combination, if somewhat distracting as well. The impossibility concerns how a letter could have arrived at a certain point in time, and the solution is pretty well worked out. One of the better stories of the collection.

The penultimate story is "The Episode of the Absent Fish". Jerry is guarding a man over night and the next morning he is found dead in his locked apartment. I found the solution a bit too over reliant on "gadgets", as it were, but still decent.

"The Episode of the Perilous Talisman" finishes the collection. It is quite similar to Chesterton's "The Blast of the Book" where we have a book that when opened seems to cause the reader to vanish. In this case it is a talisman which has the same effect on anyone setting eyes on it.

I wasn't enamoured with this story. It felt a bit slight, and again there is the paucity of characters which makes it a bit too obvious what happened.


A collection with many ups and downs. In the end I decided to use four stories in my collection of impossibilities: "Codex", "Nail and Requiem", "Vanishing Harp" and "Little Girl Who Wasn't There". I can see why Hoch speculates that the reason the only written novel about Tarrant was never published - that King's storytelling was a bit out there.

He swings wildly between different types of stories. King certainly has a vivid imagination, but as you've probably noticed he wasn't very good at hiding his suspects... I'd recommend the collection as a curiosity, but the best stories have been reprinted elsewhere (with the exception of "Little Girl", as far as I know), so if you have the important impossible crime anthologies you will already have those stories.