Friday, June 22: Bandersnatches
BANDERSNATCHES
Lucky Thirteen – part three
by Steven Steinbock
Herewith are my seventh and eighth additions to my list of favorite anthologies. I’m embarrassed to say how often my list has changed since I began this, a month ago. I may stop at ten, and leave the rest as honorable mentions.
This time I have two anthologies to recommend that are classics despite their youth. (Both books are younger than me). The stories in The Locked Room Reader and The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes were selected according to specific themes.
The Locked Room Reader (1968), edited by Hans Santesson, is a classic collection of, as the title implies, “Locked-Room†mysteries. A locked-room mystery, for the uninitiated, is a story in which a crime has occurred in a room, cell, house, or vehicle for which it appears impossible for the criminal to commit the crime and get out. The prototype is Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue†in which two women were slain within their home, yet all the doors and windows have been locked or sealed from the inside. A locked-room mystery doesn’t necessarily need a hermetically sealed room. What is required is a seemingly impossible disappearance. John Dickson Carr and John Rhode co-wrote Fatal Descent, in which a man was shot inside a private elevator. Ed Hoch’s “The Problem of the Covered Bridge†has a horse-drawn cart enter a covered bridge and simply vanish, in front of many onlookers.
This isn’t the only Locked-Room anthology to have been published. Doug Greene and Bob Adey edited Death Locked In (which I’ll include in a future installment) in 1987. Mike Ashley has done two recent collections (The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2000) and The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries (2006). Hidetoshi Mori and Bob Adey edited ã“ã‚ŒãŒå¯†å®¤ã (This Locked Room: 18 Locked-Room Puzzles). All of these are great, but this one, as far as I know, was the first.
Santesson, who served as editor for the science fiction digest, Fantastic Universe, as well as The Saint Mystery Magazine. He collected 15 short stories and 1 novel for this collection, and dedicated the entire volume to Frederick Dannay. The collection opens appropriately with John Dickson Carr’s “The Locked Room†(not to be confused with his “Locked Room Lecture†which is contained in The Three Coffins/The Hollow Man, which Santesson summarizes in his introduction). In “The Locked Room,†the rotund Dr. Gideon Fell investigates the assault and robbery of a wealthy book collector that occurred inside a sealed, well-lit, and supervised office.
In Ed Hoch’s “The Long Way Down†an apparent suicide jumps from a building – but doesn’t land until three hours and forty-five minutes later. Other highlights include “The Dauphin’s Doll†by Ellery Queen, William Brittain’s “The Man Who Read John Dickson Carr,†and Melville Davisson Post’s classic “The Doomdorf Mystery.†The one novel included in this collection is Israel Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery. Published in 1895, it was the first book-length locked-room mystery.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes edited by Sir Hugh Greene (1970) is the first of three collections of Victorian and Edwardian crime stories compiled by Greene (the brother of author Graham Greene) immediately following his ten-year tenure as director-general for the BBC. I’m also very fond of Cosmopolitan Crimes: Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1971). But it’s hard to beat the lineup of this first anthology. It contains a pair of “Martin Hewitt†stories by Arthur Morrison. A “Man in the Corner†story by Baroness Orczy. Ernest Bramah’s “The Game Played in the Dark†featuring the blind detective Max Carrados. William Hope Hodgson’s supernatural sleuth Carnacki makes an appearance in “The Horse of the Invisible.†R. Austin Freeman, perhaps my favorite golden age short-story writer, wrote (or co-wrote) three tales in this volume: “The Moabite Cipher†which features our shared interest in Near Eastern archeology, as well as two roguish adventures featuring Romney Pringle written with J.J. Pitcairn under the pseudonym “Clifford Ashdown.â€
I’m not certain what next week will bring. But I can promise you it will be mysterious and short. Until then. . .
More great recommendations, Steve. Another locked room/impossible crime anthology was MWA’s ALL BUT IMPOSSIBLE (1981), edited by Ed Hoch.
I think THE LOCKED ROOM READER was reprinted by Dell in two volumes. Can’t recall the titles, though, and I’m too lazy to dig out the books.
One of the Dell reprints was called 8 Doors to Death: More Tales from The Locked Room Reader. It contains eight (big surprise) stories, and was published in 1970. I don’t know about the other volume.
Jon, I’d forgotten All But Impossible. Thanks.
Actually, there are 2 novels in The Locked Rom Reader, the Zangwill you mention and THE NARROWING LUST by Henry Kane, a Peter Chambers locked room novel. The other Dell reprint was titled 8 KEYS TO MURDER and had the other 8 stories from the parent anthology. One should not forget the Adey volume titled (in this country) THE ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE (can’t remember right off-hand who co-edited that) and the collection of short novels published by Academy out of Chicago entitled LOCKED ROOM STORIES, featuring Carr’s THIRD BULLET, Rawson’s FROM ANOTHER WORLD, Pronzini’s BOOKTAKER, and Hoch’s DAY OF THE WIZARD. I’m enjoying your list of anthologies and your comments.
I love locked room puzzles. Thanks for the info!
Wow, Timothy. Thanks. I didn’t know about Adey’s other collection (Just looked it up, he co-edited it with Jack Adrian). I don’t know about Locked Room Stories. Can anyone help?
Next week I plan to write about Death Locked In edited by Bob Adey and Doug Greene.
By the way, I had mentioned the Japanese anthology Bob Adey did with Hidetoshi Mori. It’s a very nice volume, but only of value to Japanese readers or hard-core collectors. But a few years ago, Hidetoshi Mori put together an absolutely gorgeous book called ミステリ美術館 (Misteri Bijutsukan – Mystery Art Gallery). It is the prettiest collection of classical mystery cover art around. The text is all Japanese, but there are more than 450 color photographs of cover art, I assume taken from Mori’s own collection. (It’s a bargain at 4,200 yen – about $34 US).
Dug through my closet and discovered that it wasn’t LOCKED ROOM STORIES but LOCKED ROOM PUZZLES, one of a group of 5 collections published by Academy Chicago back in the late 70’s/early 80’s (didn’t check the copyright, drat it). The 1st vol. was WOMEN SLEUTHS, followed by POLICE PROCEDURALS, LOCKED ROOM PUZZLES, GREAT BRITISH DETECTIVES, and WOMEN WRITE MURDER. The first 3 vol. were edited by Martin Greenberg and Bill Pronzini, the last 2 by Greenberg and Hoch. Each book had 4 short novels/novellas that were aligned with their titles. Not too bad a collection, and with the LRP collection, the Hoch story “Day of the Wizard” was worth the price.