Seven Great Detective Stories

 Seven Great Detective Stories by William H. Larson (ed)

One should be careful when choosing titles for books. For instance, if you're going to say that you've got seven Great detective stories, then you ought to be sure that the majority of readers are going to agree with you that all seven really are great...and really are detective stories. As in, there is actually some detecting going on. Of the seven stories in this collection, I'd agree that three are great (the Wade, Futrelle, and Doyle) and one is almost, but not quite (the Chesterton). And I'd agree that most, but not all, are detective stories. The Cooper story has a detective--but we really don't see him detecting. Here we see him trapping the guilty man, but we don't the gathering of clues. Futrelle's story, while be a great look at how Van Dusen thinks, also isn't really a story about detection. And neither is the Kemelman. In fact, Kemelman's story doesn't really hang together all that well. I'm not buying that the professor could just string together all those "logical" inferences and, hey, presto, actually solve a crime he didn't even know had been committed. 

My favorite story of the bunch (on this reading) is "The Missing Undergraduate." It was the first short story I've read by Wade (although I have enjoyed several of his novel-length mysteries) and I'm always happy to find a good academic mystery. I've read both the Futrelle and Doyle stories so many times over the years that I know them pretty well backwards and forwards. So, they don't make quite the impression they did when I first discovered them. ★★★ for a decent collection.

"Suspect Unknown" by Courtney Ryley Cooper: The FBI Inspector was certain he knew the identity of the man responsible for the Tilliver murder. But there is no hard evidence. How can he get the man to reveal himself as the suspect unknown? (one shot)

"The Blast of the Book" by G. K. Chesterton: Father Brown teaches a scientist interested in the paranormal and psychic phenomena how to distinguish between what is really there and what isn't when a clergyman comes along with a story about a cursed book which makes people disappear.

"The Missing Undergraduate" by Henry Wade: Inspector Poole is called back to Oxford, his alma mater, to look into the disappearance of an undergraduate known for his practical jokes. The solution is a bit macabre--reminding me of an Edgar Allan Poe story or two....

"The Problem of Cell 13" by Jacques Futrelle: Futrelle's most famous story. Professor Van Dusen insists that nothing is impossible to a thinking man. His friends wager that he can't think his way out of a prison cell...but he proceeds to do just that.

"Silver Blaze" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson are off to Dartmoor to investigate the disappearance of a famous race horse and the murder of the horse's trainer. Inspector Gregory & company have been on the case, but have made no headway. Holmes is in the area for a mere afternoon and soon has all the threads in his hand. [one hit on head]

"The Nine-Mile Walk" by Harry Kemelman: Our narrator, a candidate for district attorney, is challenged to provide a sentence of ten words or so to his professorial friend and the professor guarantees that he can come up with a logical chain of inferences that are correct--even if they aren't the true inference the narrator intended. What begins as an pedantic exercise soon turns into the solution of a daring murder on a train. 

"The Man in the Velvet Hat" by Jerome & Harold Prince: Reynolds, a journalist, spurs Inspector Magruder to hunt an apparent serial killer who targets victims from all social classes in deaths that pass as accidental. The culprit is said to be a man in a velvet hat and a brown overcoat. Magruder just wants to be sure he finds the one really responsible.... [one fell from height; one registered as pneumonia; one car accident

First line (1st story): Inspector Jessop of the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been expecting the call.

Last line (last story): "But that was this morning, Reynolds; that was this morning."

The Nine Waxed Faces

 The Nine Waxed Faces (1936) by Francis Beeding (John Leslie Palmer & Hilary St. George Saunders)

In the absence of his chief, Colonel Granby, Bob Hardcastle was serving as head man at intelligence headquarters when an urgent message came in from an Italian painter who had provided information in the past. Ludwig Berthold needs to meet with a highly placed intelligence office, so Hardcastle goes himself--only to receive a coded message that directs him to another, more famous, painter and a secret society known as Edelweiss. Berthold is having difficulty getting out of Italy and the members of Edelweiss, who hide their identities behind wax masks, are experts at helping those who need to cross the mountainous Italian border without fuss. But when Bob and his guides ski into a trap, Bethold vanishes and Colonel Granby shows up to help Bob sort everything out. With Nazi spies and Italian agents hiding behind friendly faces, the two men are in a race against time to find Berthold and the vital information he carried.

The fate of Central Europe is in the balance in this spy thriller set on the eve of the second world war. Germany and Italy are jockeying for position in Austria in an effort to "secure their borders against France." Lots of intrigue and action in the Austrian snow! Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Hmph. I'm thinking that maybe I just wasn't quite in the mood for a spy thriller, because I feel like this is a better book than I think it is at the moment. Maybe I'm a bit depressed because of what's currently going on in the world (and the good ol' U. S. of A) at the moment. Either that or I was disappointed that this wasn't more of a traditional mystery (as my previous experience with the author's Murdered: One by One would lead me to expect). So, yeah, very little mystery here--other than are all the people we think are dead really dead? (SPOILER--no, in fact they aren't. Or--if they are, not when we think they are.) Mostly a lot of running about looking for people who get snatched and tied up or snatched and (maybe) killed. The writing is pretty snappy and fast-paced, so there's that. But I really would have liked a bit more mystery and less hole-in-corner business. Especially when the wrap-up at the end doesn't feel very wrap-up-ish. Probably because Beeding had no idea where world events would take everyone in just a few years.

This is one that I'm probably going to need to read again sometime, just to see if it really is better than I think right now. ★★★

First line: I was working, aloft in Battersea, in the high flat which is not a flat, and the butler, who is not a butler, had received orders that I was on no account to be disturbed.

Last line: As for Wilhelm Fuchs and his brotherhood of Edelweiss, for all I know, the nine waxed faces still move around the pleasant streets of Innsbruck or upon the wind-swept crags of the mountains around the city, helping those that fly from a tyranny still triumphant in a world heading ever faster for Armageddon.
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Deaths = 4 (three shot; one executed)

Ten Pins Game: 2025-2026

 

Rick at the Mystillery has the bowling lanes waxed, the bowling pins polished, and the bowling shoes all lined up for those who don't have their own. Your reading challenge goal is to knock down all ten pins using books with numerals in the title. You can use any book read this year. For full details click on the link above.

I've got my bowling shoes on and am on my way to knocking all ten pens down:

One Fell Sloop by Susan Kenney (7/3/25)

A Thief or Two by Sara Woods (3/13/25)

The Three Coffins by John Dickson Carr (6/4/25)

The Four of Hearts by Ellery Queen (7/15/25)

Bodies from the Library 5 by Tony Medawar, ed (3/2/25)

Six Nuns & a Shotgun by Colin Watson (5/9/25)

 Seven Great Detective Stories by William H. Larson, ed (10/5/25)

The World's Best 100 Detective Stories Volume 8 by Eugene Thwing, ed 11/19/25)

The Nine Waxed Faces by Francis Beeding (9/22/25)

  The World's Best 100 Detective Stories Volume Ten by Eugene Thwing, ed (4/14/25)

 

The Four Just Men

 The Four Just Men (1905) by Edgar Wallace

The Four Just Men are killers--but only in the cause of justice. They operate by strict rules--to never kill for personal gain and whenever appropriate to give the marked man plenty of warning. Those on their list are men and women who have committed crimes against the public and yet the law has been unable to touch them. So the Four Just Men dispense the justice due. They have assassinated corrupt military contractors, embezzlers of public funds, and unjust judges. They have killed a murderous despot using his own public gallows. And now they have their sights set on England's Foreign Secretary who is the primary backer of an unjust Aliens Extradition Bill. The four men send Sir Philip Ramon several messages with fairly explicit terms of what will happen if he does not with draw the bill by their deadline. Scotland Yard pulls in every available man to post a cordon around Ramon's house as well as to have a man in every room of the house. And yet Sir Philip is killed in his locked study, with windows sealed and shutters barred, and no entered or left the room. How was it done? And why was one of the Four Just Men killed as well--and who did it?

When Wallace's thriller first came out, that's where the story ended. The public was challenged to submit their solutions for prize money and it wasn't until the contest was over that the final chapter was printed and the solution revealed. I'm pleased to say that I might have won a prize. I definitely spotted the how. I wasn't quite positive about who killed the Just Man, but if a real prize had been dangling in front of me I just might have gotten there. The build-up to the assassination is very good, but given the length of the book it far outweighs the attention given to the actual murder and investigation thereof. It feels unbalanced and while I don't hate inverted mysteries they're not my favorite. When I read one, I at least would like to see more of the detective's efforts in tracking down the culprit/s. However, this was Wallace's first effort and I think it a pretty good one. ★★★

First line (prologue): If you leave the Plaza del Milna, go down the narrow, where, from ten till four, the big flag of the United States Consulate hangs lazily; through the square on which the Hotel de la France fronts, round by the Church of Our Lady, and along the clean, narrow thoroughfare that is the High Street of Cadiz, you will come to the Cafe of the Nations.

First line (1st chapter): On the fourteenth day of August, 19--, a tiny paragraph appeared at the foot of an unimportant page in London's most sober journal to the effect that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had been much annoyed by the receipt of a number of threatening letters, and was prepared to pay a reward of fifty pounds to any person who would give such information as would lead to the apprehension and conviction of the person or persons, etc.

Last line: It was Gondsalez who had placed the "clue" for the police to find.

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Deaths =  12 (four shot; five hung/strangled/asphyxiated; one poisoned; two electrocuted)

Murder for Two

 Murder for Two (1943) by George Harmon Coxe

Jack "Flash" (or "Flashgun") Casey is none too pleased (see first line below). Uncle Sam has turned him down for military service because of a bum knee. In a fit of good nature (what he subsequently thinks of as soft-headedness), he volunteered to teach a twice-weekly photography class for the American Women's voluntary Services. And now his boss MacGrath has told him that he must allow one of the women whose father has a major stake in the newspaper to tag along with him so she can observe a photographer in action.

Crusading news columnist Rosalind Taylor is always on the hunt for ways to make crime bosses and those who swindle the average Joe pay for their dirty deeds. When an engineering inventor named John Perry is released from jail (for what he claims was a trumped-up charge), she's ready to help. Several years ago, Perry devised a new lubricant which should have made him wealthy and a more suitable suitor for Karen Harding--whose father is none too thrilled at the couple's attachment. But he claimed that his backer, Matt Lawson--a former bootlegger who began investing in more legitimate enterprises just before the war--tricked him when the contract was signed. Perry wound up going to jail for assault.

Taylor has discovered information that will support Perry's claims and she sets up a meeting with one of her sources. She invites Flash Casey, the newspaper's crack cameraman who just happens to be a pretty decent detective as well, to join the meeting and, of course, his assistant for the day tags along as well. But the news columnist doesn't show up for the appointment and when Casey and his shadow go to her apartment, they find the place ransacked and Taylor dead in her car a few blocks from the building. Casey soon finds himself knee-deep in another murder investigation...and so is his shadow. Because she just happens to be Karen Harding and she's still in love with John Perry. 

Coxe as he does with his Kent Murdock series (also a cameraman/detective), provides a tough guy crime novel with a soft touch. Soft-boiled, the story gives us a seemingly untouchable swindler equipped with hired guns and enforcers--and, of course, Casey can hold his own with the bad guys (even if he is a softie underneath). But the mystery is not a simple one. It's not just a matter of the swindler doing in those who might expose him. There's an extra angle on the case and only Casey is able to spot it. This is the first of the Flash Casey mysteries that I've tried and while he is cast in the same mold as Murdock, he's not a carbon copy. The interesting angle that Casey spots, and which I did not, gives just the right touch. ★★★★

First line: Casey was burning.

Last line: Taking pictures for a big city newspaper might be a headache, but for him it was the only job in the world and there was no other that could compare with it.

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Deaths = two shot

Ten Pins 2023-24

 

Rick at the Mystillery has the bowling lanes waxed, the bowling pins polished, and the bowling shoes all lined up for those who don't have their own. Your reading challenge goal is to knock down all ten pins using books with numerals in the title. You can use any book read this year. For full details click on the link above.

I've got my bowling shoes on and am on my way to knocking all ten pens down:

Number One Is Walking by Steve Martin

"Missing: Page Thirteen" by Anna Katharine Green MINUS Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel = 2

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

The Four False Weapons by John Dickson Carr

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

6 X H by Robert A. Heinlein

 "The Eighth Lamp" by Roy Vickers MINUS "Four to One--Bar One" by Henry Wade = 7

 Murder for Two by George Harmon Coxe X The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace = 8

Nine--And Death Makes Ten by Carter Dickson

12 Impossible Daredevil Stunts by Samantha S. Bell 

"The Problem of the Five Marks" by Melville Davisson Post (the 2 in 12 X 5 = 10)

Challenge for Three

 Challenge for Three (1938) by David Garth

[from the back of the book] For twenty years Fontaine Shaw, granddaughter of Nathaniel "Two-Gun" Shaw, railroad and mining tycoon, had lived her life with reckless abandon. But her startling exploits began to catch up with her when she bailed a burlesque dancer out of Night Court and deposited her on the doorstep of Jock Pemberton, serious young professor of American History at the Brent School. The events that followed were unexpected and far-reaching in their results. For Fontaine, Jock, and Connie (the dancer) suddenly found themselves obliged to join forces in order to meet the almost impossible challenge of Nathaniel Shaw's last will and testament.

You see at the end of his life ol' Two-Gun missed the rough and tumble world of his early years--when he had to work for his money and he had to take on challenges and obstacles to get where he was. He's watched his beloved granddaughter get into scrapes--like smuggling rare jade objects past the customs officials just for the pure thrill of it--but he doesn't think she sees the real value of money or what her life could really be. So, his will stipulates that for a period of ten years this young beauty, used to having everything that money can buy, is given an allowance of just $200 a month. But--if she can earn her own way, the estate will match whatever she earns. At first she's mad. Then she's a bit depressed. And then...she realizes she might make a good thing out her penchant for smuggling things under the noses of the customs officials. Except...she gets herself entangled with a couple of nasty fellows and needs the help of Jock and Connie to get her out. Will the three of them be able to outwit the bad guys? And...almost more importantly (from the way the story line goes) which gutsy gal will win the heart of Jock--and will he get the girl he really wants? 

This was a very entertaining book that turned out to be more adventure than mystery. There's definitely no murder although there are deaths play a vital role in the plot. Fontaine Shaw is a great character as is her grandfather--though we see too little of him. I will say that Fontaine lacks of bit of insight into the intentions of other women. Surely she can see...well, I won't spoil it for you. Jock plays true to form as the mild-mannered professor who can turn quite strong and courageous when challenged and he shows the true "Two Gun" spirit as he holds up his part of the challenge. Connie is a street smart woman who knows what she wants, but also has a heart of gold when she realizes that she may not get what she wants. And, of course, it's always good to see the bad guys get their just desserts and the good guys ride off into the sunset. ★★★ and 3/4.

First line: The usual gay welter that followed the docking of a great transatlantic liner was rampant on the long steel pier--clusters of reunions, porters pirouetting their baggage trucks among the swirls of humanity, white-jacketed stewards streaming down the gangway from the overhanging ship's side with hand luggage, inscrutable customs inspectors with declaration forms in their hands waiting for trunks to be unlocked, suitcases to be unstrapped.

Last line: "You're Two-Gun's beloved pal--'Wyoming Bill' Ferguson who captured ten Indians all by himself."

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Deaths = 3 (two accident; one natural)

2022-2023 Ten Pins Game

 

Rick at the Mystillery has the bowling lanes waxed, the bowling pins polished, and the bowling shoes all lined up for those who don't have their own. Your reading challenge goal is to knock down all ten pins using books with numerals in the title. You can use any book read this year. For full details click on the link above.

Here are my books--I've got my bowling ball ready to go as soon as Rick opens the doors:

The ONE Hundred & One Dalmatians Dodie Smith

Take TWO at Bedtime by Margery Allingham

Challenge for Three by David Garth

FOUR Days' Wonder by A. A. Milne 

The FIVE Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers 

SIX Deadly Dames by Frederick Nebel

Seven Tears for Apollo by Phyllis A. Whitney

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie X Bodies From the Library 2 by Tony Medawar (ed)