Two Picks for EQ

"Kick."
By Hugh MacNair Kahler (1883-1969).
Found in Collier's, April 12, 1930.
Short short short story (1 page).
Reprinted in EQMM, April 1949.
Online HERE.

In the criminal world a strange code of honor prevails:

. . . "What'd we just pull off? A play with no jack in it—a—a—what did the kid call it? A good act?"

Joe got it. "Oh, a good deed, huh?"

"Sure," said Louie. "A good deed."  . . .

"No Alibi."
By Hugh MacNair Kahler (1883-1969).
Found in Collier's, February 11, 1939.
Short short short story (1 page).
Reprinted in EQMM, February 1950.
Online HERE.

The perfect murder . . . except for one little thing:

. . . He tiptoed toward the door into the living room. Beyond it he could hear the sound of faraway violins coming over the radio, and Waring's voice, dust-dry, talking a tone or two above the music. Murdock's lips twisted. Waring always kept the radio going while he dictated his dull stuff into that recording machine. It helped him think, he claimed.  . . .

Resources:
- Kahler was incredibly prolific, supplying plenty of copy for the slicks (a bibliography HERE) and even the movies (HERE).

Category: Crime fiction with no soft edges

"I Have Never Known a Year in Which the American Stage Was So Bestrewn with Corpses"

"Murder at 8:30 Sharp."
By Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943).
Found in Collier's, March 17, 1928.
Theatrical review (2 pages).
Online at UNZ: Begins HERE (page 22) and ends HERE (scroll down to page 49).

There has always been a tendency towards copycatism among the people who produce plays, movies, and TV shows; that is, if it sells a lot of tickets then obviously we need more of the same. Sometimes this strategy works—let's not forget that Humphrey Bogart's The Maltese Falcon (1941) was the third version to come out of Hollywood—but too often the copycats lack the skill to come up with something original; and this is where Alexander Woollcott comes in, having some fun skewering Broadway theatrical producers. (Warning: He does supply a SPOILER for The Trial of Mary Dugan.)

From a 1932 production of 'The Trial of Mary Dugan'

A few excerpts:

IF THE historian of the American theatre does not lose his mind, such as it is, he will recall the season of 1927-1928 as the year in which the drama went in for homicide in a serious way.

"If I've seen one murder play this winter," you may have heard someone say, "I've seen a dozen."

But, after all, it might also be predicted in advance that when you do see one successful murder play, you are likely for that very reason to see a dozen more. For plays and pictures (like historical novels and haircuts and dance steps) are wont to run in shoals. . . .

. . . thus does one play induce another, much as one pin in a bowling alley knocks down the next. Some such species of contagion sweeps through the theatre every year. And when the last curtain falls on the theatrical season of 1927-1928 it will be seen in retrospect that this one was above all others the year of murder plays.  . . .

Crime on the stage, says Woollcott, does sometimes go unpunished:

. . . When the wise men who are always conducting their intrusive researches in the subcellar of human motive have decided why we all flock so readily to murder plays, I hope they will then investigate our slight but perceptible inclination in favor of those plays in which the murderer goes scot free.

In most of the dramatic studies of homicide which have held the stage this season . . . the law (like the black-mustached villain in the old melodramas) has been foiled again—and again. In none of these plays is much sympathy expended on the person murdered.  . . .

And then there was:

. . . Cock Robin, a mystery play about a murder occurring during the rehearsal of an amateur dramatic society, thereby (as one sour old Broadwayite observed) providing plenty of motive right at the start.  . . .

Woollcott admits to a secret wish which had yet to be fulfilled, and which we will leave incomplete for you to read on your own:

. . . IF THE psychologists ever get around to studying my own addiction to such murder dramas, I suggest, as a clue for their researches, the possibility that I keep on going to them in the urchin hope that some day when the distracted heroine grasps the pearl-handled revolver, points it at the minor actor . . . .

Resources:
- From Wikipedia [HERE] we learn this about our theater critic: "Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. He was the inspiration for Sheridan Whiteside, the main character in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and for the far less likable character Waldo Lydecker in the film Laura (1944). He was convinced he was the inspiration for Rex Stout's brilliant detective Nero Wolfe, but Stout, although he was friendly to Woollcott, said there was nothing to that idea."
- Among the "murder dramas" that Woollcott mentions are these: The Trial of Mary Dugan (1927) [HERE], Women Go on Forever (1927) [HERE], Coquette (1927) [HERE], and The Letter (1927) [HERE], all of which were later filmed.

Woollcott in a 1940 Pullman ad

Category: Murder most theatrical

"It May Not Be Terribly Original, but Shooting Someone Tends to Be Pretty Effective"

THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES.
Edited by Otto Penzler (born 1942).
Anthology: 68 stories.
Vintage Crime.
2014. 941 pages (TPB).
For sale HERE.

The word "definitive" is often loosely tossed around to designate a book, but Otto Penzler's universally praised locked-room anthology comes close to being just that; in "Resources" below you'll find a large number of reviewers who agree. A few of the stories are in the public domain, and we've supplied links to those (with no guarantee they'll still be there). Your best bet, though, is to buy this book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Familiar as the rose in spring.
The most popular and frequently reprinted impossible crime stories of all time.

(1) Edgar Allan Poe, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” [online HERE]
(2) Jacques Futrelle, “The Problem of Cell 13″ [online HERE]
(3) Wilkie Collins, “A Terribly Strange Bed” [online HERE]
(4) Lord Dunsany, “The Two Bottles of Relish” [review HERE]
(5) G. K. Chesterton, “The Invisible Man” [online HERE]
(6) Melville Davisson Post, “The Doomdorf Mystery” [online HERE, PDF]
(7) Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Speckled Band” [online HERE]

This was the most unkindest cut of all.
Stabbing in a completely sealed environment appears to be the most common murder method.

(8) John Dickson Carr, “The Wrong Problem”
(9) William Hope Hodgson, “The Thing Invisible” [online HERE]
(10) James Yaffe, “Department of Impossible Crimes”
(11) R. Austin Freeman, “The Aluminum Dagger” [online HERE]
(12) Gerald Kersh, “The Crewel Needle” [brief review HERE]
(13) Stephen King, “The Doctor’s Case” [online HERE, PDF]
(14) Manly Wade Wellman, “A Knife Between Brothers” [briefly discussed HERE]
(15) Joseph Commings, “The Glass Gravestone” [more about Commings's stories HERE]
(16) Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace, “The Tea Leaf” [online HERE]
(17) Peter Godfrey, “The Flung-Back Lid” [mentioned in passing HERE]
(18) John Lutz, “The Crooked Picture”
(19) Carter Dickson, “Blind Man’s Hood”

Footprints in the sands of time.
Is there a more baffling scenario than to find a body in smooth sand (or snow) with no footprints leading to or from the victim?

(20) Edward D. Hoch, “The Man from Nowhere” [a Simon Ark bibliography HERE]
(21) Fredric Brown, “The Laughing Butcher” [review HERE]
(22) Michael Innes, “The Sands of Thyme” [online HERE]
(23) Samuel Hopkins Adams, “The Flying Death” [online HERE]
(24) A. E. Martin, “The Flying Corpse”
(25) Vincent Cornier, “The Flying Hat”

And we missed it, lost forever.
It is a fantasy for many people to disappear from their present lives. Some people disappear because they want to, others disappear because someone else wants them to. And objects—large objects—sometimes disappear in the same manner.

(26) Hugh Pentecost, “The Day the Children Vanished” [brief discussion HERE]
(27) Stanley Ellin, “The Twelfth Statue” [review HERE]
(28) William Irish, “All at Once, No Alice”
(29) Edmund Crispin, “Beware of the Trains” [part of a review HERE]
(30) H.R.F. Keating, “The Locked Bathroom”
(31) Dashiell Hammett, “Mike, Alec and Rufus”
(32) C. Daly King, "The Episode of the Torment IV" [mentioned in a review HERE]
(33) Julian Hawthorne, “Greaves’ Disappearance” [online HERE]
(34) Ellery Queen, “The House of Haunts” [review HERE]
(35) J. E. Gurdon, “The Monkey Trick”
(36) E. C. Bentley, “The Ordinary Hairpin”
(37) Jacques Futrelle, “The Phantom Motor” [online HERE]
(38) Edward D. Hoch, “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny” [modi operandi of both author and thief discussed HERE]
(39) Judson Philips, “Room Number Twenty-Three”

How easily is murder discovered.
There are so many ways for the creative killer to accomplish the act.

(40) Lynn Wood Block & Lawrence Block, “The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke” [author's notes HERE]
(41) Augustus Muir, “The Kestar Diamond Case”
(42) Kate Ellis, “The Odor of Sanctity”
(43) Edward D. Hoch, “The Problem of the Old Oak Tree” [briefly dealt with HERE]
(44) Nicholas Olde, “The Invisible Weapon” [also collected elsewhere; go HERE]
(45) Ray Cummings, “The Confession of Rosa Vitelli”
(46) Stephen Barr, “The Locked Room to End Locked Rooms”

Shoot if you must.
It may not be terribly original, but shooting someone tends to be pretty effective.

(47) Clayton Rawson, “Nothing Is Impossible”
(48) Bill Pronzini, “Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?” [part of a review HERE]
(49) G.D.I. & M.I. Cole, “In a Telephone Cabinet”
(50) Stuart Towne, “Death Out of Thin Air” [see the review HERE]
(51) Agatha Christie, “The Dream” [very brief reviews HERE]
(52) Margery Allingham, “The Border-Line Case” [see the diagram HERE]
(53) Melville Davisson Post, “The Bradmoor Murder”
(54) Leslie Charteris, “The Man Who Liked Toys” [this one was filmed; see HERE]
(55) Hulbert Footner, “The Ashcomb Poor Case” [online HERE]
(56) Georges Simenon, “The Little House at Croix-Rousse”

Stolen sweets are best.
How does a thief remove valuables from a closely guarded room? It seems 
impossible, but . . .

(57) Erle Stanley Gardner, “The Bird in the Hand” [part of the discussion HERE]
(58) David Durham, “The Gulverbury Diamonds”
(59) Frederick Irving Anderson, “The Fifth Tube” [briefly discussed HERE]
(60) MacKinlay Kantor, “The Strange Case of Steinkelwintz” ["a poor-man's Sherlock Holmes"; go HERE]
(61) Maurice Leblanc, “Arsène Lupin in Prison” [online HERE]
(62) L. T. Meade, “The Mystery of the Strong Room” [online HERE]
(63) Dennis Lynds, “No Way Out”
(64) C. Daly King, “The Episode of the Codex Curse” [included in the discussion HERE]

One man’s poison, signor, is another’s meat.
Often described as a woman’s murder weapon, poison doesn’t really care who administers it.

(65) Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Poisoned Dow ’08″ [online HERE]
(66) Margaret Frazer, “A Traveller’s Tale”
(67) P. G. Wodehouse, “Death at the Excelsior” [online HERE]

Our final hope is flat despair.
Some stories simply can’t be categorized.

(68) Martin Edwards, “Waiting for Godstow”.

Resources:
~ This book has attracted a lot of attention. We can't add any more to what these reviewers have already said:
- At Goodreads HERE.
- At Kirkus HERE.
- At Shelf Awareness HERE.
- At Mysterious Reviews HERE.
- At Biographile HERE.
- At Beneath the Stains of Time in 7 parts HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
- . . . and very extensively (8 parts) at The Locked Room Mystery starting HERE.

Category: Locked-room mysteries

"A Large and Increasing Number of Writers Have Tried Their Hands at the Kind of Story That Poe Invented, and Some of Them Have Succeeded"

"A Long Way After Poe."
From The Nation, September 19, 1907.
Online (HERE).

Reacting to the recent publication of Brander Matthews's essay, "Poe and the Detective Story" (1907), an anonymous editor at The Nation took the opportunity to second Matthews's judgments while unknowingly communicating to us, over a century later, what readers of the period expected of detective fiction and detective fiction writers. Some of what he writes is still true today: about Sherlock Holmes being the most universally recognized fictional character; about the often desperate and risible attempts by Poe and Doyle imitators to give their sleuths superficial distinctiveness; about the stringent requirements that the fictional detective must meet which are so at variance with real life; about the paramount importance of playing fair with the reader (the example of the retired army officer); and about how too many of Poe's imitators lack the one thing Edgar had in abundance, real literary talent.

You can follow the link above or read the whole thing below:

A LONG WAY AFTER POE

Poe is so generally recognized as the father of the detective story that it hardly needs a magazine article by Prof. Brander Matthews, "Poe and the Detective Story," in Scribner's, to recall his services to this branch of literary art. Poe, says Professor Matthews, "transported the detective story from the group of tales of adventure into the group of portrayals of character. By bestowing upon it a human interest he raised it in the literary scale." In doing this he marked the way for some of the most voluminous and popular authors of his own and the next century. A large and increasing number of writers have tried their hands at the kind of story that Poe invented, and some of them have succeeded. The statement that Sherlock Holmes is the most widely known figure created by a living writer is, we suppose, hardly open to question.

It is a remark of Sir Conan Doyle himself that "the writer is left with only one quality, that of intellectual acuteness, with which to endow his hero." Those who follow Poe—at a long distance—make somewhat pathetic attempts to differentiate their heroes. These characters have been distinguished by bald heads, crazy thatches of hair, commanding figures, official positions, private retainers, offices down town, "lodgings" up town, but to very little purpose. Scratch any one of the tribe and you find a more or less successful imitation of Dupin. And beside each of them travels a counterpart of Poe's anonymous reporter, or Doyle's Dr. Watson. No one thinks in these days of charging a new writer with plagiarism, or even lack of originality, because he writes a series of stories about mysteries solved by a preternaturally clever deductive reasoner whose acts are reported by a preternaturally stupid friend and ally. These are features of a form that has now become conventional, like the fourteen lines of a sonnet, the pair of comic lovers in a rural drama, or the three volumes of the old-time novel. There are not nine and sixty ways of constructing detective stories; there is only one way. The rules of the game have been worked out and the devotees of the detective story, who are found in high and low station, among old and young, know these rules, and resent any departure from them. It might be added to the current estimate of Poe's service in this department of letters that these rules go back to his small collection of detective stories, and that very few of his imitators have been able to keep to them consistently.

The Stock Exchange itself is not founded to a greater extent on confidence than the good detective story. The real detectives of Mulberry Street or Scotland Yard are misled every day by misstatements of fact, errors of observation, plain lies. The detective of fiction should never be so misled. When he errs it should be because he has drawn the wrong conclusions from evidence in itself reliable. If he fires his revolver at an apparition, and there is no sound of breaking glass, the reader has a right to say, "Well, it wasn't a mirror," and is justly indignant when he is told later that the marksman merely missed his aim. The detective of fiction is likewise, under the rules, discouraged from discovering his important evidence at the last moment. To illustrate, one of this year's crop of long detective stories is concerned with the murder, in succession, always on the thirtieth day in the month, of the five sons of a retired army officer. Since the young men had neither friends nor enemies in common, the suggestion is at once made that the murderer must be some one who is avenging some past wrong against the father. The father is interrogated, and states that he knows of no personal enemy, and has wronged no one in his long life. The reader is thereupon entitled to discard all theories having to do with the old gentleman's past; and for nearly three hundred pages follows an amazingly intricate structure of plot. The reader learns various ingenious reasons why persons with no grudge against the father should still have desired the death of all the sons. He sees one person after another suspected and exonerated. Then, on page 280, a veiled woman comes into the story, and it appears that the officer on the thirtieth day of a bygone month had hanged two of his natural sons, and their mother was giving him tit for tat. That is an excellent example of the detective story as it ought not to be.

Poe knew the art of mystifying without resorting to the concealment of clues. Capt. Kidd's cipher in "The Gold Bug" is given the reader in full to decipher, if he can. Half-way through "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" the reader has every reason that Dupin had to supply the mischievous ourangoutang, if only he has the wit to put his facts together. It is still a paradox that Poe, the literary artist, should be the founder of a school of fiction in which, as in the puzzle corner of a newspaper, bad and slovenly writing is practically no bar to success.

Resources:
- "Poe and the Detective Story" (7 pages) is online (HERE).
- Poe certainly deserves credit for inventing the modern detective story, comprised of what Hillary Waugh designated as the 12 "essential ingredients of the mystery"; but as Waugh also noted, Poe failed to include one more ingredient, the one whose absence our Nation editor indignantly objects to, the one millions of mystery readers (including Neil Simon) have 

complained about for centuries; go (HERE) to see what we mean.

Category: Detective fiction criticism

"Your Drug Is the Greatest Single Crime-Preventive Aid of the Century"

"There Is a Crooked Man."
By Jack Wodhams (born 1931).
Novelette.
First appearance: Analog, February 1967.
Online HERE (where the author's name is misspelled and typos abound) and (HERE; go to text page 24).

Getting from here to there has always been something of a problem, but Instravel is supposed to do away with that difficulty. However . . . .

A few passages:

Police methods have advanced enormously in the last thirty years. They will, inevitably, advance still more. Sure . . . but you can also bet the equally inevitable crooked man will also advance. Here, the Crooked Man advances most hilariously.

~ ~ ~

. . . Mr. Frederic Traff looked down at himself and choked back a cry of dismay. He had been incorrectly reassembled. His legs were on backwards and his toes pointed to the rear.

~ ~ ~

. . . "Their concern is not with ethics but results."

~ ~ ~

. . . "If Instravel fails, you can be sure that the failure is due to deliberately contrived outside interference."

~ ~ ~

. . . "The continuing expansion of our technology greatly increases the variety of criminal ways and means. . ."

~ ~ ~

. . . "They call it togetherness."

~ ~ ~

. . . "After all, how much genius can we use?"

~ ~ ~

. . . Professor Muldible stepped from the receiver cabinet smiling broadly at his success as Professor Muldible stepped from the dispatch cabinet slowly shaking his head in perplexity . . .

~ ~ ~

. . . "Warfare today is as it should be, a nonviolent mental conflict that will give a bloodless victory to those most fitted to rule, the wisely intelligent people."

~ ~ ~

. . . "Your self-realization is illusory. You are a carbon copy without carbon . . ."

~ ~ ~

. . . Sir Edgar switched off his secret viewer. "If that doesn't give me an uncontested divorce, I don't know what will."

~ ~ ~

. . . "I can only jump to the obvious conclusion: Somehow, by some disintegration or disorientation process, a vertical hole was made inside the building. Dorphelmyer stepped into it and fell to his death."

~ ~ ~

. . . Much more than cosmetic surgery, a most promising and rewarding field for development. Instravel Re-Creative Physical Perfectionizing.

~ ~ ~

. . . "Why do people commit crimes? And why, when organized crime is practically nonexistent, when crime is now the province of the rare amateur, why should crime prevention cost more?"

~ ~ ~ 

. . . "Right under my nose all the time. The most obvious suspect and I discarded him. Why? Because he didn't have the know-how, the scientific background, the technical knowledge."

~ ~ ~

. . . "Taken all round, I must say that your drug is the greatest single crime-preventive aid of the century . . ."

~ ~ ~

. . . "Between us we have overcome practically every obstacle. We can create a chronomorphous state, and our main difficulty now is period selectivity."

~ ~ ~

. . . He rubbed his chin. It might work. He could envision her whereabouts and influence something to fall on her. Or perhaps give her a push. Or maybe put a glidocar out of control and . . .

~ ~ ~ 

. . . "Your memory will be gone for about a week."

~ ~ ~ 

. . . "I saw no reason why such a fortuitous discovery should become public property."

Resources:

- Jack Wodhams, a British-born Australian SF writer, has a short Wikipedia article about him HERE and a more substantial one in the SFE HERE, with bibliographical data HERE.

Category: Science fiction about the abuses of protean technology

SCRIBNER'S Reviews III

The mystery fiction reviewer in the July 1938 issue of Scribner's (online HERE) encountered five books that you might never have heard of (except, perhaps, for the first one); the reviewer's reactions are recorded below in full:

Murder on Safari, by Elspeth Huxley (Harper, $2), is one that the connoisseur of detective stories just mustn't miss. The scene is "Chania," a British colony in Africa; the detective is Vachell of the C.I.D.; the murdered persons are a wealthy noblewoman who first loses her jewels—the reason why Vachell was called in—and then her life, and a too utterly utter young Englishman who knows just a bit too much to live any longer; and the murderer is pretty well beyond suspicion, though always in sight, until the end. No other man hunt this month is likely to give better sport. [Also see the GAD Wiki entry HERE] [Curt Evans has written: "After a decent apprentice genre effort, this fine writer produced two fine detective novels [Murder on Safari and Death of an Aryan (1939)], interestingly set in Africa, with an excellent series detective." From a Mystery*File posting HERE]

Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim is back at Monte Carlo again, and all is jake! His most recent two volumes have been slightly on the sour side, but in [The] Colossus of Arcadia (Little, Brown, $2), the magic wheel spins and the croupiers drone the famous formulae, lovely ladies and faultlessly groomed men bust the bank, champagne flows like Niagara—and behind all the gaiety there is the Black Shadow of a War that will set All Europe Aflame, unless One Man is foiled. The old familiar faces. But it is entertainment at its slickest and most diverting. [GAD Wiki HERE and a website devoted to Oppenheim HERE]

Francis Beeding's The Black Arrows (Harper, $2) is another tale of international intrigue, and slightly sterner stuff than the Oppenheim opus. The hero, John Crowder, an English secret agent sent out to help the Italian Government scotch a super-Fascist group that would oust the Duce, misses death by a fraction in the first chapter and is in peril on practically every page. Not quite so tightly constructed as earlier Beedings, but good for an idle evening. [GAD Wiki HERE and still more about the author on Mystery*File HERE]

Lilies for Madame, by Hugh Austin (Crime Club, $2), rings the changes on the old impersonation motif. Jean Wren, the penniless heroine, takes the place of Georgia Lore, a night-club beauty with a smirched past, on a South American cruise. The real Georgia Lore is then murdered, and the trouble begins. A touch on the lurid side, but with lush moments that make it agreeable. [GAD Wiki HERE]

It's a bit too long, but for shrewd plotting, tense atmosphere, and sound deduction They Talked of Poison, by March Evermay (Macmillan, $2), deserves an extra good mark. The murderees are a Southern pastor and his daughter. The narrator—who has a couple of fingers in the solution of the case—is the daughter of the professorial specialist in crime at whose home occurred the inexplicable poisoning of a pet dog that started the baneful ball rolling. And the crime is finally broken by an observant and likeable cop. The identity of the killer is a moot matter until the final omnium gatherum, and the reader may be slightly annoyed because the guilty one has not been very much to the fore in the preceding chapters. [Also see the Mystery*File review HERE]

Category: Detective fiction criticism

"Now, If You Attempt to Stop Him, I Swear Before God I'll Shoot You!"

"The Burglar."
By Tom Masson (1866-1934).
First appearance: The Smart Set, June 1903.
Online HERE.

A burglar, a woman, a necklace, a detective, and an absent husband—there's more going on here than first meets the eye:

. . . As the burglar picked up the candlestick once more, he turned and faced the bed. With her head on the lace pillow, a beautiful woman lay sleeping. It was rather an interesting situation. There was the burglar, with the mask over his face to conceal his identity, and the hundred-thousand-dollar necklace, that the woman's husband had given her, loosely thrown in his pocket. There was the woman quietly sleeping as if nothing in the world was the matter; and there was the detective, watching—and waiting.  . . .

"The Great Bingtop Mystery: In Which Our Modern Methods Are Revealed."
By Tom Masson (1866-1934).
Found in Well, Why Not! (1921), pages 154-158.
Online HERE.

Another burglary, this one a little closer to home:

MR. BUNCUM POTTS, the world-famous detective, sat in his office one morning at nine o'clock, nonchalantly, as was his habit, tapping his pencil on his pink blotter, when the bell rang, and there was ushered in a short, stout man, very much out of breath.

"I have a very remarkable case to report to you," said the short, stout man. "Last night I was robbed."  . . .

Resource:
- There's a rather abrupt Wikipedia article about humorist Tom Masson HERE.

Category: Thefts with an ironic slant