Review: The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace

by Mary

Assistant Commissioner of Police T. X. Meredith, a man of unorthodox though successful methods of detection and best friend of mystery writer John Lexman, has been investigating Remington Kara, an extremely rich Greek with something of a turbulent history and a former suitor for the hand of Lexman's wife.

Kara was almost murdered years ago, and such is his fear of another attempt being made his bedroom is “practically a safe.” It features burglar-proof walls, reinforced concrete roof and floor, an unreachable window, and its sole door has in addition to a lock “a sort of steel latch which he lets down when he retires for the night and which he opens himself personally in the morning”.

Of course Kara is eventually found dead, locked in this safe-like room. How was Kara’s murder accomplished, why did his secretary disappear and his manservant run away, and for that matter who killed the dog in the basement of his house? Was Kara killed by the men he has feared for years or someone else, and if so, who was it and why?

Answers to these conundrums are revealed at a gathering at the end of the book in which All Is Explained, including how the challenge presented by the locked room was overcome.

My verdict: On the negative side I felt there were perhaps one too many coincidences and the identity of the murderer was not as well hidden as it might have been. On the other hand, the locked room explanation is ingenious, clues to how it was accomplished are revealed in a fair fashion in the narrative, and I confess I did not foresee one of the final twists. I would sum it up as a diverting, light read.

Etext: The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace

Review: The Kennel Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine

by Mary

Readers must have been surprised to learn Philo Vance bred Scottish terriers, but it was as well for the forces of law and order he did, for it was this interest, coupled with his vast knowledge of Chinese ceramics, that ultimately provided the solution to the Kennel Murder Case.

The novel begins with one of my favourite fictional crime scenes: a suicide in a room locked on the inside. This is merely window dressing, for it is in fact murder. And murder most peculiar, for collector Archer Coe had been shot after his death. In addition, his coat and waistcoat have been removed and his dressing gown substituted but his street shoes have been left on -- not to mention he has been struck on the head and a rib broken. Then there is the question of the badly injured Scottie found downstairs, an unknown dog in a household that does not care for them.

Leaving aside intruders, there aren't many suspects. There's Archer's brother Brisbane and niece and ward Hilda Lake. Milanese museum official Eduardo Grassi, is a house guest, Raymond Wrede, a friend of the family, visits often, and the Coe's Chinese cook Liang Tsung Wei is naturally viewed as suspicious. Financial motives of various sorts provide most of them with an interest in the affair, although Mr Wei is an unknown quantity and seems too cultured for a mere servant. There is talk of revenge for shady deals and tomb robbing and further mayhem ensues but of course Vance ultimately solves the case.

My verdict: The Kennel Murder Case rattles along faster than other entries in the series and there is less eyeball glazing vapouring on esoteric topics than usual. This is intriguing, given the solution hinges on knowledge of canine matters and porcelain, but the leaner prose is the better for it. The reader is cleverly misled through their own expectations although part of the solution begins to manifest to the really attentive towards the end of the book. As for the kennel, we don't see too much of it so the title is somewhat misleading but the little Scottie goes to live with Vance, so it ends happily for her, if not for certain others. In a discussion of methods used to lock rooms from the outside to give the impression of having been bolted by someone inside the room Van Dine naughtily reveals examples from two named novels, so beware of spoilers.

Etext: The Kennel Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine

Review: The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post

by Mary

Sir Henry Marquis is Chief of the C.I.D. at Scotland Yard. This collection relates some of the cases in which he played a part, although in a few entries he takes a more peripheral role.

The Thing On The Hearth is blamed for the death of Mr Rodman, a scientist who invented a process to make precious gems. He is found dead in a locked room guarded by an Oriental servant and his death involves what appears to be a visitor from...somewhere else. Sir Henry visits Rodman's New England mansion to investigate the matter.

Sir Henry has been looking over the memoirs of Captain Walker, head of the US Secret Service. In their ensuing discussion Walker tells him the tale of an inebriate hobo, who, when everyone else had failed, was instrumental in locating a number of stolen plates for war bonds, thus earning The Reward.

The next story involves a large sum of money Madame Barras is foolishly carrying on an unaccompanied two mile journey through the forest lying between the home of an old school friend and the village hotel in which madame is staying. Sir Henry is also a hotel guest and helps search for The Lost Lady.

The titled parents of a young man fighting at the front in France are extremely distressed. His fiancee has been staying out half the night motoring all over the landscape with Mr Meadows, and even admits to having deliberately picked him up! But when Mr Meadows obligingly gives a lift to Sir Henry, who is on his way to investigate a murder, footprints from The Cambered Foot, not to mention other clews, turn out to be not at all what they seem.

In the next story, an Englishman, an American, and an Italian are *not* sitting in a bar but rather are chatting about the justice systems of their respective countries at Sir Henry's villa. The Italian count relates how it was legally possible for The Man In The Green Hat, proved without a shadow of doubt to be guilty of premeditated murder, to escape the death penalty.

Sir Henry owns a diary kept by the daughter of his ancestor Mr Pendleton, a justice of the peace in colonial Virginia. The diary describes cases in which Pendleon was involved and this one concerns dissolute Lucian Morrow's wish to buy a beautiful Hispanic girl from Mr Zindorf, whose ownership of her is dubious to say the least. However The Wrong Sign turns out to be right for saving the innocent.

Another Pendleton story follows. Peyton Marshall's will favouring Englishman Anthony Gosford has gone missing and it transpires Marshall's son has hidden it for what appears to be good reason. But can the lad's unsupported claims be proved, allowing him to inherit what his father promised him? The Fortune Teller will reveal the answer.

The next tale relates a third case involving Sir Henry's ancestor. Pendleton meets a girl wandering about in despair. This is not surprising given her uncle, with whom she had been living, has just kicked her out of his house after informing her that her father was a rogue who robbed him and absconded. The Hole In The Mahogany Panel bears mute witness to the truth.

The war is over and the traitoress Lady Muriel is in desperate financial straits as she can no longer sells British secrets. She overhears a conversation that ultimately leads to her to kill a man when discovered in the act of stealing an explorer's watercolour of, and map showing the route to, an African lake where treasure lies at The End Of The Road.

In The Last Adventure explorer Charlie Tavor tried to find the ancient route of gold-bearing caravans crossing Mongolia in order to salvage the precious metal from those that foundered. He returns to America with only a few months to live and his friend Barclay undertakes to sell Tavor's map to the location to a man who had previously swindled Tavor...

Jewel dealer Douglas Hargrave meets Sir Henry at their London club. Sir Henry is puzzling over an advertisement run in papers in three European capitals, trying to deduce what The American Horses represent in an obviously coded message. Then Hargrave meets a lady who wants to buy a large lot of valuable gems from a Rumanian who demands payment in cash....

Lisa Lewis, American Ambassadoress, relates a curious tale at a dinner party at Sir Henry's house. The Dominion Railroad Company has experienced a number of terrible accidents and fears numerous reports alleging negligence will lead to its bankruptcy. Yet despite all possible precautions the Montreal Express derails because of The Spread Rails. Lisa's friend Marion Warfield, who revised a textbook on circumstantial evidence, solves the mystery.

At the same dinner party Sir Henry describes the case of the hardhearted lawyer who demands more money to represent a butler on trial for murdering and robbing his employer. The money cannot be found and the accused's wife wanders the streets in despair. A wealthy opera singer takes pity on her, treats her to a meal, and listens to her story. Is she a fairy godmother in the modern equivalent of The Pumpkin Coach and can she help the man on trial?

Miss Carstair is having doubts about her marriage to diplomat Lord Eckhart despite her fiance's gift of a stunning ruby necklace, for she is extremely troubled by gossip he is the worst ne'er do well in London. While she is pondering the matter Dr Tsan-Sgam, who has been dining with Sir Henry, arrives with news of the death of her father in the Gobi Desert, ultimately learning of its connection to The Yellow Flower.

Next, a post-war story narrated by a weekend guest at Sir Henry's country house. Sir Henry reveals the true story of an incident on a hospital ship boarded by Prussian submarine commander Plutonburg. Wounded St Alban defies him with the fighting words "Don't threaten, fire if you like!", becoming an instant hero to the British. But there's a lot more to it than that, and a situation as bitter as the rolling waves is revealed in A Satire of the Sea.

In the final yarn, the uncle of narrator Robin tries to put him off visiting him, but the envelope in which the letter arrives has a hastily scrawled appeal to ignore the contents and come to The House By The Loch. Will his uncle's labours to cast a perfect Buddha ever be successful? Who is the highlander sitting knitting while talking about the Ten Commandments and taking a great deal of interest in the movements of Robin's uncle?

My verdict: A first rate collection with several stories having a O. Henryesque twist or two catching the reader by surprise. My favourites were The Last Adventure, a wonderful biter-bit yarn, and A Satire of the Sea, with its psychological underpinnings. An author's note for The Man In The Green Hat cites a specific American legal case and readers may like to know it was heard in 1913.

Etext: The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post

Review: As a Thief in the Night by R. Austin Freeman

by Mary

As is her custom, Mrs Barbara Monkhouse is away for a week or two helping organise a women's emancipation movement but this time she returns home to find her husband Harold is dead.

The exact nature of chronic invalid Harold's illness has never been diagnosed although he's been ailing for years. During Barbara's absence Harold's brother Amos visited him and was so shocked by his appearance he insisted on an expert opinion. It is all to no avail, however, for a few days later Harold dies of arsenic poisoning. Was it administered in his food or drink or perhaps added to his medicine? Everyone in, or with access to, the house at the time is under suspicion -- domestic science teacher Madeline Norris (Harold's daughter by his first wife), Harold's highly strung secretary Anthony Wallingford, the servants, and even medical man Dr Dimsdale, not to mention regular visitor and narrator Rupert Mayfield, a barrister and inseparable childhood friend of Barbara Monkhouse and her now deceased stepsister Stella Keene. Mayfield asks Dr Thorndyke to investigate so that innocent parties can be cleared of suspicion, but the true depravity of the culprit is only revealed at the close of the novel.

My verdict: This entry in the Thorndyke saga revels in a particularly inventive plot, richly decorated with such details as mysterious bottles of unknown origin and an infernal machine in the post, not to mention what well may be the most inventive way of administering poison ever utilised in the annals of detective fiction.

Etext: As a Thief in the Night by R. Austin Freeman

Review: The Cat's Eye by R. Austin Freeman

by Mary

Dr Jervis being away advising on a case in New York, Robert Anstey, KC, narrates the mystery of The Cat's Eye as the complicated affair unfolds.

Anstey is crossing Hampstead Heath one night when, just after a man runs past him, he hears a woman crying for help in the other direction. He finds her in time to see her knocked down and her attacker get away.

The mysterious woman has been stabbed and Anstey carries her to a nearby house to seek aid. Just as he arrives, he hears the terrified housekeeper Mrs Benham calling the police, for her master Andrew Drayton has been murdered in his small private museum of inscribed objects -- lace bobbins, ornaments, jewelry, and the like.

The dead man is the brother of Sir Lawrence Drayton, a neighbour of Anstey's in the Temple as well as an acquaintance of Dr Thorndyke's, who is brought in to investigate while the police pursue their own enquiries. Anstey has acted as Thorndyke's leading counsel for years and, in order to provide him with useful evidence, takes -- illegally, one would think -- two pieces of fingerprinted broken glass away from the crime scene.

The injured woman, Winifred Blake is interested in inscribed jewels and had visited Drayton that evening to look at his collection. She had hardly entered the house when he was shot in another room, and in foolishly trying to follow a man escaping from the scene was herself assaulted. Evidence shows two criminals were involved and that certain items of jewelry have been stolen.

The plot then thickens into a rich stew whose ingredients include Biblical verses with no apparent relation to each other, a good luck charm made from a porcupine ant-eater bone, a strand of blue hair, spectacles which allow the wearer to see what is happening behind him, and a mystery within a mystery.

My verdict: A particularly rich plot featuring a dash of romance, with clues realised to be in plain sight once the reader knows the solution. The novel includes some interesting asides, such as an explanation of how Scotland Yard's Habitual Criminals Registry compares hundreds of fingerprint records kept on cards when seeking matches to a particular set of dabs. The preface mentions a particular incident, identical to one that happened in real life, was already in a chapter written some time before the actual event occurred.

Etext: The Cat's Eye by R. Austin Freeman

Review: The Hunt Ball Mystery by William Magnay

by Mary

Give me a novel opening with a fellow arriving for a social gathering at a country house, and I'm as happy as the proverbial clam.

The Hunt Ball Mystery begins in just this fashion, and right away we are in crisis mode. Hugh Gifford discovers he is without evening clothes due to a mistake the guard made in unloading luggage. It seems Gifford and his friend Harry Kelson are going to a "ripping dance" -- the Hunt Ball of the title -- to be held that evening at Wynford Place, now the home of Dick Morriston although once the property of Gifford's uncle.

The station master wires up the line to arrange for Gifford's traps to be transferred to a down train at the next stop, although Gifford won't get them until about ten. Still, the night will still be fairly young at that hour and he will have plenty of time to attend the festivities.

The two men depart in a fly with a stranger who has the gall to ask them for a lift given he will be a fellow guest at the Golden Lion Hotel. They are outraged at his request and amazed to hear the stranger is also going to the Hunt Ball. Gifford sniffily decides the man is not of their class, a conclusion based largely on the other's looks and manner. It transpires the man is Clement Henshaw, brother of Gervase, whom Gifford knows by repute as a fellow legal eagle.

In private conversation at the Golden Lion, Gifford and Kelson indulge in a positive orgy of character shredding. Henshaw is, they tell each other, the "[w]rong type of sportsman...spoilt by that objectionable, cock-sure manner" and similar comments.

At this point I was almost starting to hope this nasty pair of snobs would be found stark dead behind the stables at Wynford Place.

But it's Henshaw who's found dead, locked in a room in the tower at Wynford Place -- a room with the key on the inside. Admittedly there's a window big enough for an adult to use to escape but there's an 80 feet drop to the ground. The general consensus is Henshaw committed suicide by stabbing himself with a chisel.

Suicide by chisel seems an unlikely method, I hear you remark, and indeed this is the opinion of Gervase Henshaw, who now appears at the house door. His opinion it was not suicide is shared the doctor who gives evidence at the inquest.

At this point the mystery gallops off in full cry after the fox of whodunnit, how, and why.

My verdict: I have long been a fan of the Country House Mystery, set on estates owned by families residing in rambling houses with secret passages, panelled halls with huge fireplaces, morning rooms opening onto peacock infested terraces, libraries lined with leather bound tomes and ancestral portraits, wooded grounds featuring lakes and terraces and gamekeepers, and carriages rolling up and down wide drives sweeping between rows of ancient oaks to exit past lodges guarding ornate iron gates. Being born and raised in a grimy industrial city, these mysteries were an alien land to me and one I enjoyed and still enjoy exploring.

Thus I was disposed to like The Hunt Ball. Alas, this particular visit was not too successful. For example, the locked room solution is pedestrian and most readers will guess it. I found the characters unsympathetic and the police presented as inept, not least in overlooking a couple of clues -- including one of a particularly glaring nature. It may be this novel was intended as a spoof of the Country House Mystery, but all in all I found The Hunt Ball Mystery something of a disappointment.

Etext: The Hunt Ball Mystery by William Magnay

Review: Average Jones by Samuel Hopkins Adams

by Mary

As an assiduous reader of personal advertisements -- and if you won't admit to doing the same, I think you'll agree they are important plot points in a number of detective novels -- I warmed instantly to Adrian Van Reypen Egerton Jones, nicknamed Average Jones for obvious reasons.

A highly intelligent, very rich, and terribly bored young man, as the first yarn opens he is wondering what to do with himself. His friend Mr Waldemar, owner of The Universal, an important NYC paper, suggests Jones set up as a kind of one man consumer protection wallah, giving advice, as Jones' business card will later declare, "upon all matters connected with Advertising". As a bonus, Jones will pass on discoveries about various swindles perpetrated through ads to Waldemar, thus keeping the paper's lengthy advertising columns "clean".

Jones gives it a whirl and soon becomes engrossed in the work to the extent of setting up an agency to handle the more humdrum requests for advice while he looks into ads that grab his attention, particularly those hinting at criminal activity. Average Jones relates the cases he investigates.

It's difficult to review short stories without giving too much away, but I'll take a stab.

THE B-FLAT TROMBONE is a locked room mystery. By what method was mayoral candidate William Linder blown up in a locked room on the third floor of his mansion on Kennard Street in Brooklyn?

After three unsuccessful attempts on his life, Malcolm Dorr keeps two guard dogs. Both are killed yet neither were shot or poisoned. Then there is a rash of canine deaths in Bridgeport, CT. Is there a connection between them and the mysterious RED DOT?

Where is young rakehell Roderick Hoff? His father, who made millions selling quack medicine, engages Jones to find him. Jones follows an OPEN TRAIL to find the lad and outfoxes Hoff's swindling father when he tries to wiggle out of paying the reward money.

MERCY SIGN is rooted in a real historical tragedy and is much darker than the first three stories. Jones and his friend Robert Bertram look into a strange case involving a missing academic assistant, a wrecked houseboat, and a dead foreign dignitary.

The jewels are called BLUE FIRES and form a beautiful necklace, a gift from a Mr Kirby to his fiancee Edna Hale. Their disappearance means their wedding is postponed -- yet they were neither stolen nor returned. What do a torn curtain and broken-off bed knob have to do with the matter?

Anonymous letters of a particularly nasty sort -- being attempts to persuade their recipient to commit suicide or commit himself to an asylum -- are written out in PIN-PRICKS on junk advertising mail sent to William Robinson. What is the purpose of these communications and who is responsible?

Bailey, the l4 year old son of rural minister Revd Peter Prentice, is missing after a meteor lands on a New England barn, setting it ablaze. Then an ad appears revealing he is alive but not where, and a certain bit of BIG PRINT aids Jones in tracing the lost boy.

Enderby Livius is THE MAN WHO SPOKE LATIN, claiming he has been transported from Roman times to the present day and cannot speak English. He is up to no good in bibliophile Colonel Ridgway Graeme's chaotic library, and to find out what Livius is at Jones poses as a mute classical scholar.

THE ONE BEST BET begins with a man committing suicide because he arrives at Waldemar's newspaper too late to amend his personal ad, having had second thoughts about what he wrote -- as well he might since the ad reveals a plot to murder the governor. Can Jones prevent the crime?

THE MILLION-DOLLAR DOG involves one of those odd wills so beloved by the rich in detective fiction. In this instance, Judge Hawley Ackroyd's advertisement seeking 10,000 black beetles puts Jones on the trail of an attempt to gain a fortune by killing the titular dog and concealing its body.

My verdict: What an inventive way to introduce a detective to cases in all levels of society! I enjoyed this collection a great deal and recommend it to readers who enjoy slightly offbeat and very clever short stories. Now I'm off to read the personal ads in today's papers....

Etext: Average Jones by Samuel Hopkins Adams