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M.E.Mayer is the husband and wife writing team of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, soon also to be Eric Reed with the January 2016 release of The Guardian Stones a mystery set in WWII England.

Yes, it even confuses us!

So to simplify things for everyone we've decided to blog jointly at Mary Reed and Eric Mayer.

Mary will continue to post her reviews there every week on Golden Age Mystery Sunday.

Review: The Three Hostages by John Buchan

by Mary

Having recently reread Greenmantle, I'm now rereading some of the other Hannay novels. While some will certainly disagree, I view The Three Hostages as a mystery-thriller because there is a mystery to be solved: where are the three missing people and who is behind their abductions?

The book opens a couple of years after WWI. Sir Richard Hannay and Mary Lamington are now married with a young son. They reside in Fosse Manor, a nice touch given they first met when she was staying with her aunts at the Manor while engaged in a bit of undercover work herself.

One evening the Hannays' friend Dr Greenslade visits and their conversation turns to how to write a "shocker". Dr Greenslade's theory is the author should take three apparently unconnected things, invent a connection, and dream up a problem to solve involving the connection. His example: "an old blind woman spinning in the Western Highlands, a barn in a Norwegian saeter, and a little curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew with a dyed beard."

In the real world ugly international doings are afoot and eventually they intrude into Hannay's household. Members of the families of three great men -- "the daughter of the richest man in the world, the heir of our greatest dukedom, the only child of a national hero" -- have been kidnapped and are being held as hostages by a "combine" whose members are outwardly respectable but which is using the disaffected across Europe and elsewhere to further their own concerns, including fraud, profiteering, and even murder. Though known to the authorities, if members of this combine are captured too soon the hostages will doubtless be executed and certain delicate political matters in the balance upset.

By a twist of fate Dr Greenslade's literary example serves to aid Hannay and his friends get on the track of the villains in a race against a deadline at which they can only guess.

My verdict: Was Buchan following Dr Greenslade's advice, I wonder? Hannay has quite a puzzle to solve and the first half of the book follows his attempts to make sense of the sole clue: six lines of doggerel sent to each of the three great men. There is more intelligence work and less physical action in this novel and the slow working-out of the mystery is convincing. Mary Hannay, while mostly off the page, plays a role near the end that is both gripping and believable and received a loud hurrah from here!

Etext: The Three Hostages by John Buchan

Review: Number Seventeen by Louis Tracy

by Mary

When writer Frank Theydon emerges from a theatre, he notices a beautiful girl and a distinguished man who is evidently her father waiting for their car. A minor accident delays Theydon's taxi home to Innesmore Mansions by ten minutes, and he notices the man, who had told his daughter he was dropping in at his club, outside the building.

Theydon occupies Flat 18 on the top floor, opposite the titular 17. Much to his surprise the man enters the building. By the sound of his footsteps Theydon deduces the stranger visits 17, the home of Edith, widow of Arthur Lester, for about five minutes, and then leaves.

Next day Theydon is off to dine with millionaire James Creighton Forbes to talk about the latter's campaign urging the peaceful use of airships. Not long before this engagement Theydon learns Mrs Lester was murdered the previous night. Yet another shock awaits him: Forbes turns out to be the man he saw enter the block of flats. And what's more, Theydon is followed home from Forbes' house by a mysterious grey limousine.

After being interviewed that evening by Chief Inspector James Leander Winter and Detective Inspector Charles Furneaux, an unlikely pair who appear to be constantly at each other's throats but are *far* shrewder than they seem, Theydon becomes involved willy nilly in their investigation of the murder and its ramifications.

And so the reader is off to the races with numerous twists and turns involving, among other things, an American tourist, a motorcycle chase, kidnappings, shots through windows, pea-sized ivory skulls -- and the return of the grey limousine.

My verdict:

Number 17 might best be characterised as a mystery-thriller with a dash of romance. I liked the sparring police partners, straightforward Winter and imaginative Furneaux, who pop up unexpectedly all over the landscape. There's plenty of action and a bit of suspense and in fact as Furneaux remarks at one point, "Oh, it's a plot and a half, I can assure you", and indeed it is, Oscar, it is.

Etext: Number Seventeen by Louis Tracy

Review: The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace

by Mary

Odette Rider loses her cashier job after she indignantly rejects a suggestion from Thornton Lyne, owner of the large store where she works, that they cohabit without benefit of clergy. As a result Lyne, a thoroughly mean-spirited man, plots to frame her for embezzlement of company funds even though he knows the real culprit is a departmental manager, Mr Milburgh.

Lyne's cousin Jack Tarling, late of the Shanghai Detective Service, has just opened an investigative agency in London's Bond Street and visits Lyne to discuss the Milburgh matter. When Tarling learns Lyne wants to pin Milburgh's defalcations on Miss Rider -- Milburgh of course being more than happy to go along with the idea -- he refuses to have anything to do with it.

As part of his general posing as a charitable fellow, Lyne has become acquainted with Sam Stay, burglar and jail bird, who is due to be released from prison next day. As usual, Lyne meets him, gives him breakfast and twenty pounds, and tells such outrageous lies about Miss Rider that he succeeds in getting Stay interested in helping his benefactor "get even" with her.

Tarling warns Miss Rider of the possibility of Lyne taking revenge in some way. The next morning Lyne is found murdered, his body laid out in Hyde Park with a pad formed from one of Miss Rider's nightgowns and some of her hankies used in an attempt to staunch his gunshot wound -- and a bunch of daffodils laid upon his chest. He is wearing slippers, and a small piece of red paper with Chinese characters written on it is in his waistcoat pocket, although that garment, his coat, and his boots are in his car l00 yards away from his body. Tarling interprets the writing as saying Lyne brought trouble upon himself.

Tarling goes to visit Miss Rider, who had supposedly gone to her mother's house in Hertford the previous evening. Things look bad for her, not only because of the nighty and hankies but also because a shot was heard in her flat the night before. But she is not in Hertford and has in fact disappeared. A warrant is issued for her arrest and Tarling, who has fallen for Miss Rider, embarks on a quest to find her, establish her innocence, and discover who was responsible for the murder of the odious Lyne -- and the motive behind the crime.

My verdict: Readers' notions of likely suspects are cleverly led along until a plot twist turns them on their heads, while the machinations of Mr Milburgh will make some almost admire his cleverness -- until they learn the nasty depths of his nature. The murderer is the person most readers will least suspect. And will any of them be able to look a daffodil in the trumpet again without recalling their mental picture of the corpse in Hyde Park?

Etext: The Daffodil Mystery

Review: The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow by Anna Katharine Green

by Mary

Published in 1917 and set in l9l3, the novel opens with the death of a young girl on an upper floor of a New York museum. She's been killed by an arrow and even stranger, while the museum has arrows aplenty, no bow is anywhere to be seen.

Detective Ebenezer Gryce, now 85, and his assistant Sweetwater arrive to investigate. Was the death an accident or murder? But who would be foolish enough to loose an arrow in a museum? On the other hand, what motive could there be for doing away with a girl barely in her mid teens?

After Gryce arrives everyone in the building is sent to stand in the same spot as they were at the time of the incident. Suddenly an extra man appears. Where has he sprung from?

The plot immediately begins to thicken. How does an English visitor, a stranger to the victim, know her name? Why has the girl's travelling companion hastily left their hotel without leaving a forwarding address? For that matter what was this well-bred young lady doing going about without a chaperone? Where is the bow? How could the arrow have been shot without someone in the open galleries noticing?

Readers will need to refer to the floor plans more than once, because the plot is very dense and the movements of those in the museum at the relevant time are vital in solving the mystery. Time and again the investigation comes to a screeching halt, only to be picked up again after a bit of cogitation and/or legwork by Gryce, Sweetwater, and others. The real problem is linking the various prime movers to each other and particularly finding the motive. Sweetwater's use of carpentry skills aids the investigation in an unexpected way!

Etext: Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17763/17763-h/17763-h.htm

Review: The Paternoster Ruby, Charles E. Walk

by Mary

The Paternoster Ruby may not be bang in the middle of the generally accepted dates for the Golden Age but don't let that stop you from reading this novel. For those who like them -- and I do, very much -- it features a second floor plan and a reproduction of a cipher of several numbers, oh frabjous day! Not to mention colour illustrations. Can't beat such riches with a big stick!

But what of the plot? Well, the narrator, Inspector Knowles Smith, remarks at one point he believes "the reader will unhesitatingly admit, by this time, that the Page affair presented many remarkable aspects".

And so it does.

As the book opens on a January day in 1892, Inspector Smith is investigating the murder of wheat king Felix Page, who had recently made a killing on that grain and in the process trounced hated rival Alfred Fluette. There are two immediate suspects: the murdered man's two overnight guests, these being his private secretary and a young man sporting a fresh black eye who initially refuses to say what business brought him to Page's mansion the night before. However, the secretary reveals the latter's visit has to do with the titular ruby. Naturally, the ruby was involved in two deaths, three if you count the man hanged for murdering its owner Paternostro, who gave his name to the gem.

And so begins a convoluted tale in which the narrator, then in his 20s, tells of the twists and turns of his investigation. There is more to the situation than murder and the theft of the fabulous ruby, and much of the action takes place in the dead man's mansion which at one time or another has a number of unexpected visitors while Smith and a colleague are in residence seeking clues and the missing ruby.

My verdict: The novel is written in a surprisingly modern style and moves along like all get out. There's a twist at the end completely demolishing my theory about the gem, who pinched it, and Page's murderer. I suspected just about every possible culprit except the person who confesses and even then...but no spoilers here. I'll be looking out for more of Walk's works.

Etext: The Paternoster Ruby

Review: The Jacob Street Mystery by R. Austin Freeman

by Mary

Tom Pedley is a painter of landscapes. However, on this particular day in May the work on which he is engaged needs more than a little imagination, for he is in a small copse in Gravel Pit Wood, whose bosky dells are being rapidly gobbled up by developers. Concealed by shrubbery from the casual glance, he observes a woman creeping along the path through the wood. Her odd behaviour shows she is eavesdropping on a pair of men who have just walked past. One man returns and is furtively followed by the woman, and the intrigued Pedley checks the far end of the path but sees no sign of the second man.

Pedley lives in a studio in Jacob Street, which has a number of houses favoured by artistic types, and while eating his tea that afternoon decides to create a work based on the strange incident. He will call it The Eavesdropper and use his keen artistic eye to recreate the three strangers as actors in the scene. About a week later, he is working on the painting when his friend Mr Polton -- they first met in a Soho antique shop -- calls with a gift, a pewter tankard purchased in a shocking state from a Shoreditch junk stall and refurbished by the handy Mr P. Nor is this the only skill Mr Polton displays in the course of the mystery. Indeed, if he had ever turned to a life of crime he would have been difficult to catch. It is from Mr Polton that the artist, who has no wireless and does not read the papers, learns a murder by forcible administration of poison was committed in the wood during the very time he was painting the sylvan scene, and that from a description circulated in print and on the airwaves he is obviously the man being sought for interview by the police.

Enter Inspector Blandy, not to mention the brassy Mrs Schiller, a modernist artist separated from her husband and now living next door to Pedley, and Mr William Vanderpuye. He is studying with Dr Thorndyke and thus known to Mr Polton, who introduces him to the artist. It is while visiting the studio to arrange for a portrait sitting that Mr Vanderpuye meets Mrs Schilling, who pops in for a visit most days. The pair strike up a close friendship and Mr Vanderpuye is the last person seen with her before her disppearance. For while a dead woman is found locked into Mrs Schiller's room, she is not its tenant.

We now leap forward a couple of years. Mrs Schiller is still missing, but Drs Thorndyke and Jervis become involved in the case due to a large bequest which would be hers if she is still alive. A presumption of death has been requested but the solicitor feels uneasy about the circumstances. Is she alive, and if she is, why has she not been found despite sterling efforts by the authorities and a vast amount of publicity in the press? Who is the woman found dead in her room and what is the connection between them?

My verdict: Readers of this book learn another way to open a door locked from the inside. Doubtless most are familiar with at least two of them, the turn-key-from- the-outside-with-the-sugar-tongs and the push-key-out-on-to-a-piece-of-paper-shoved-under-the- door-and-pull-carefully-to-your-side. The latter works as I discovered when locked in my bedroom in a 1930s vintage flat as a witty jape, but you need a door with a gap under it. The method used in this case needs a particular type of key, common at the time so fair enough, and its use helps point up the fact that, despite appearances, the dead woman found in Mrs Schiller's room was not a suicide.

There are sufficient and fair clues, and the investigations are described in lively fashion. It turns out to be a more complicated case than it seems at first glance. I guessed part of the solution but not the whole, and all in all found this novel one of the better Thorndyke outings.

Etext: The Jacob Street Mystery by R. Austin Freeman

Review: The Man In Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary

Lawrence "Lollie" Blakely, narrator of The Man In Lower Ten, is a partner in the Washington law firm of Blakeley and McKnight. In this novel he describes "the strange events on the Pullman car Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburgh, on the night of September ninth, last".

Blakeley is going to Pittsburgh to take a deposition from John Gilmore, an ailing millionaire and the prosecution's chief witness in a big forgery case. Strictly speaking, it is his partner Richard McKnight's turn to take the journey, but he's cried off, claiming he's "always car sick crossing the mountains." However, the real reason, as Lollie well knows, is McKnight wishes to visit a girl he loves, as on a number of previous weekends.

While Lollie is packing a bag, McKnight drops in to give him certain vital documents relating to the forgery case. During his visit, even before Lollie sets out on his journey, mysteries start to gather. Who is the woman McKnight claims to see staring into Lollie's room from a house across the way, a house that has supposedly been empty a year? McKnight connects this strange event with the documentation Lollie is to carry, and advises him to guard it with every care, for its loss will mean disaster for the prosecution.

So Lollie visits Gilmore's house, where he notices a framed photo of a lovely girl named Alison, Gilmore's granddaughter. Needless to say, this photo makes quite an impression on Lollie. Having obtained Gilmore's deposition, Lollie visits a restaurant for a meal before taking the overnight train back to Washington, and while dining notices a couple whose relationship seems rather strained and that the man is somewhat intoxicated. At the station, he is just about to buy his sleeping berth for the return journey when a woman unknown to him asks him to buy her a lower berth when he purchases his, as she has been traveling in upper berths for three nights.

I would have thought anyone approached by a stranger in this fashion, and especially a lawyer, would consider it somewhat odd, the more so given the social mores of the time. In any event, Lollie being a gentleman obliges. Given the choice of berths, he gives the lady lower eleven and takes lower ten for himself.

However, when he goes to his berth later that evening he finds the man from the restaurant snoring away in it, evidently having mistaken it for his due to his intoxicated condition, and so Lollie instead occupies lower nine. But sleep eludes Lollie, so he is up and about in his jammies and bathrobe while just about everyone else aboard is in the arms of Morpheus. He eventually retires to bed and wakes up next day to find his clothing and bag (wherein is locked the vital legal evidence) missing and the man in lower ten murdered.

Forced to wear the clothing left behind by whoever stole his clobber and due to circumstantial evidence of a convincing nature, Lollie is suspected of the murder. He is saved from arrest by perhaps one of the most outrageous deus ex machina in detective fiction: a train crash in which he and one or two others are the only survivors.

But to be fair, this crash later leads to an important pointer on a line of enquiry in the investigation of the murder, although this pointer is one whose method of appearance rather strains credulity.

Suspected of murder, Lollie (arm is broken in the crash) returns home and finds himself plunged into all manner of strange goings on. With his partner McBride and one or two helpers he tries to find out the who and why of the death, while himself being shadowed by the police and fighting a growing attraction to McBride's light o' love.

The Man In Lower Ten is written in MRR's usual light style but offers a fairly dense plot with an occasional red herring and a large cast of characters bound together in occasionally unexpected ways. Narrator Lollie is not as giddy as some of her protagonists, though there are dollops of humour here and there. Ultimately the mystery is tied up in a satisfactory fashion. I haven't read all the author's works yet, but enjoyed this one, not least because it's a sort of locked room mystery -- but not quite. My eye always lights up when I see plans of houses or rooms or fragments of documents reproduced in the text, and this novel features a sketch of the carriage where the murder was committed although its role is minimal compared to what is revealed in similar diagrams included in, say, Agatha Christie's works.

Etext: The Man In Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart

The Greene Murder Case, S. S. Van Dine

by Mary

It has been about l2 years since Tobias Greene died and under his will, if his children do not continue to live in the family mansion for 25 years after his death -- if they marry, their spouses must reside there also -- they will be disinherited. Naturally this has lead to disgruntlement and tension among the siblings, and interviews with their servants confirm there have been years of "daily clashes, complainings, bitter words, sullen silences, jealousies and threats" in the Greene family.

It all comes to boiling point when oldest daughter Julia is killed and her sister Ada wounded in what is initially thought to be a burglary gone wrong. It soon becomes obvious it was no such thing and the siblings do not hesitate to air their grievances against each other to DA John Markham, Philo Vance, and the usual company. In fact, when it comes to suspects, a third daughter, Sibella, declares flat out "If you're looking for possibilities you have them galore. There's no one under this ancestral roof who couldn't qualify."

The household consists of bedridden Mrs Greene, the four children left (Ada, Chester, Sibella, and Rex), German cook Gertrude Mannheim, given to going about muttering to herself, the maids Hemming, convinced God is smiting down the sinful Greenes, and Barton, who rightly reckons "There's something awful funny going on here", plus elderly butler Sproot who reads Martial, although only a snob would find that suspicious. Then there's Doctor Arthur Von Blon, who visits more often that caring for Mrs Greene would seem to necessitate.

Soon there is another death in the mansion....

My verdict: While I would not go so far as to observe that lying beneath the Greene case are what Van Dine in Lovecraftian mode describes as "obscure fetid chambers of the human soul. Black hatreds, unnatural desires, hideous impulses, obscene ambitions", the set-up is bizarre enough to make readers pay close attention to the details and the map of the house, and therefore one or two clues will probably be identifiable fairly easily. One vital to the solution is not presented in quite fair fashion unless you stretch your definition of fair, in which case I will begrudgingly agree that, well, perhaps it was. I wavered between three possible culprits and one of them was the right one -- but in all fairness, it was the last person I began to suspect. A dark novel.

Gutenberg ebook: The Greene Murder Case

Review: Beware Your Neighbour by Miles Burton

by Mary

Hallows Green is a quiet street of detached houses with highly respectable inhabitants, a microcosm of middle-class England. There's Walter Glandford, retired science professor, general practitioner Dr. Jeremy Teesdale, solicitor Peter Raynham, brothers Lawrence and Barry Flamstead, who live at opposite ends of the street and unfortunately do not get along too well, retired admiral Sir Hector Sapperton, philanthropist Miss Florence Wayland, former civil servant Charles Vawtrey, and bank manager Claude Dodworthy. An exotic note is struck in this residential backwater by Hopton and Rachel Egremont, the couple holding regular religious services with a vaguely Eastern flavour in their corner house.

Generally speaking the neighbours are friendly but alas, this soon changes following a series of anonymous communications, causing each resident of Hallows Green to look with suspicion on the others.

It all begins when Glandford's morning post brings a note informing him murder stalks Hallows Green. Miss Wayland receives a New Year card signed as from Death, while Peter Raynham is the recipient of an antique dagger blade inscribed Honourable Death Is Best. Lawrence Flamstead gets a drawing of a tiger with the message Media vita morte sumus or in the midst of life we are in death. Dr Teesdale's note, a torn-out advertisement inscribed H.C.N., is left under the windscreen wiper of his car. Sir Hector receives an envelope containing one of his own calling cards amended to show Death comes for written above his name.

Banker Dodworthy's communication arrives in the form of a parcel left in his bank's night safe. It contains a wooden box which by the agency of an explosive strip from a Christmas cracker goes bang when he (rather foolishly in my opinion!) opens it. Further, the box lid is embellished Next time...Death in poker work. Vawtrey is the recipient of a photograph of a skeleton marked, in reversed letters, Yours. Only Barry Flamstead, one of the warring brothers, and the religious Egremonts are left out.

It becomes apparent whoever is keeping the postman busy is a resident of the street. And since the inhabitants naturally want to keep the situation quiet to avoid the scarlet taint of scandal, enter the admiral's former colleague and now friend Desmond Merrion to investigate.

Hardly has Merrion arrived when Vawtrey's garden goes up in flames, gigantic footprints are discovered here and there, matters escalate, and ultimately murder is done. But who is responsible and what could be the motive for the crimes disturbing this quiet pocket of suburbia?

My verdict: I felt Beware My Neighbour leaned towards metamorphing into a literary curate's egg, yet I cannot say any part of it was actually bad. All through the novel I was racking my brains as to what messages the anonymous communications could possibly mean. There's much innocent fun to be had speculating on the matter. For example, did the honourable death dagger blade sent to solicitor Raynham point to a disgruntled former client or a shady incident in the legal eagle's past? Then too why were one brother and the religious couple left out of the general correspondence? The reader is drawn along through a string of strange incidents until Merrion begins to unravel what is going on. When the solution is revealed, readers may accept the motive behind the odd communications as fitting with the ultimate crime, though if like me they begin thinking about it later they may begin to wonder if the whole odd arrangement was over-egging the pudding somewhat -- not to mention pointing the finger into a very small circle, surely something the culprit would wish to avoid. So there was a little disappointment at the end of a novel with an otherwise excellent set-up. I for one would have loved to see what sort of plot Agatha Christie would have constructed using those letters as its kicking off point!

Etext: Beware Your Neighbor by Miles Burton

Review: The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

by Mary

This collection of stories appeared in the early 1890s and features Miss Loveday Brooke, who works for Ebenezer Dyer, head of a detective agency in Lynch Court, off London's Fleet Street.

Miss Brooke is in her thirties and began detecting as the result of an event (not described) by which she was "thrown upon the world penniless and all but friendless". With no way to earn a living, she chose this particular line of work, which had the effect of cutting her off from her friends and original position in society. By this we can safely deduce she is well bred, the more so as she has rooms in Gower Street and employs a maid. Miss Brooke is nondescript in appearance, making her occasional impersonation of, for example, a nursery governess seeking work or a lady house decorator easily carried off.

A few words about her various adventures:

The Black Bag Left on a Door-Step
Craigen Court is burgled, Lady Cathrow's jewels stolen, and her French maid suspected of having a hand in the job. Is there a connection between the theft and a bag whose contents include clerical trappings and a suicide note found on a doorstep not far away?

The Murder at Troyte's Hill
Highly unpopular Alexander Henderson, lodge keeper at Troyte's Hill, is found murdered in his bedroom, which has been turned not so much topsy turvy as completely rearranged in a bizarre fashion, with bed-clothes up the chimney, mantelpiece ornaments arranged in a line on the floor, the clock on its head, and so on. Yet nothing has been stolen.

The Redhill Sisterhood
Sister Monica has rented a house in fever-haunted Paved Court in Redhill, probably not the best location for the Sisterhood's home for crippled orphans. The Sisters take children begging around local villages each day and strange to relate, burglaries seem to follow in their tracks.

A Princess's Vengeance
Major Druce is engaged to the Turkish Princess Dullah-Veih, but his gaze has been wandering to his mother's amanuensis Mlle Cunier. Now the latter has disappeared, taking only her coat and hat...

Drawn Daggers
Miss Monroe, staying with the Revd and Mrs Hawkes, has lost a valuable diamond necklace but she and Mrs Hawkes wish the matter to be hushed up. Now Mr Hawke is receiving anonymous drawings of daggers, and with his wife conveniently away, he engages Loveday to look into the matter.

The Ghost of Fountain Lane
On holiday in Brighton, Miss Brooke investigates the matter of a blank cheque stolen from Revd Charles Turner, cashed for £600, and returned with the mysterious annotation 144,000 on its reverse. Then there's the ghost....

Missing!
Miss Irene Golding of Langford Hall, Leicestershire, has disappeared and £500 is offered for aid in finding her. Her Italian maid may know more than she is willing to reveal. The final plot twist will be too weak for many to accept.

My verdict: The collection is not terribly sparkling and occasionally does not play fair with the reader, although its explanations of Miss Brooke's chain of deductions are reasonable and demonstrate one of her main traits: common sense. The stories will however certainly be an interesting read when viewed as an early example of the female detective, although sometimes too slowly paced for most modern readers.

Illustrated etext: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/pirkis/brooke/brooke.html

Review: The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln

by Mary

Twins Helen and Barbara McIntyre arrive at court to give evidence against one John Smith, caught burgling the McIntyre mansion. Strange to relate, the sisters ask lawyer Philip Rochester, who happens to be present, to defend Smith, which task he undertakes.

Smith is taken ill as he leaves the witness box and dies, whereupon he is discovered to be in disguise. He is James Turnbull, cashier of the Metropolis Trust Company, Helen's fiance, and Rochester's room mate. Incredibly, all three claim not to have recognised him. Turnbull's angina pectoris is thought to have caused his death, but Helen insists on an autopsy.

It transpires Turnbull was burgling the house because of a silly wager made with Barbara that he could not pull it off. Barbara asks her sweetheart Harry Kent, Rochester's partner in a legal practice, to find out who murdered Turnbull, for she and her sister are convinced his death was the result of foul play.

Soon the deceased Turnbull is suspected of forgery, Rochester goes missing, an eavesdropper lurks at a window, and a handkerchief is suspected as being the murder weapon. To further the busy plot, various characters play pass the red-sealed envelope, whose contents turn out to be the last thing most readers will expect.

My verdict: While the initial pace is slow, it picks up after a few chapters. The solution is complicated, not to say outrageous, so don't try reading The Red Seal if there is anything to distract you from noting every nuance. Cleverly worked red herrings mislead, and the explanation of the characters' roles in the tragedy and subsequent events features what must be the largest number of culprits-named-and-then-it's-someone-else's-turn-to-be-accused many readers will have read -- and all in a single chapter! Or to put it another way, the plot features twists galore. I suspect not many readers will guess whodunnit.

Etext: The Red Seal

Review: A Silent Witness by R. Austin Freeman

by Mary

Dr Humphrey Jardine's narration treats of a strange chain of events that befell him when he was newly qualified, at a time when there were still horse-drawn cabs and the descent of dusk saw lamplighters at work.

His adventures began late one evening when he went for a stroll along Millfield Lane on the edge of London's Hampstead Heath. He sees a corpse, a clerical gent going by his garments, lying further up the narrow thoroughfare but when he returns with police reinforcements a few minutes later the body has gone. Naturally enough, the chaps in blue are politely sceptical about what Jardine saw or, as they see it, did not see.

Jardine returns next day to examine the lane and finds a suspicious stain on the fence near where the body had lain. He also picks up a tiny reliquary made of gold, its frayed silk cord suggesting it had been worn as a necklace or in some other way about its owner's person. Climbing up and looking over the fence, he sees obvious tracks leading away from the fence -- taken all together, suggestive circumstances to say the least.

Dr Thorndyke suggests Jardine act as locum tenens for one Dr Batson, thus pitching the young medic into a positive whirlwind of odd goings-on. After a particularly inventive effort at murdering Jardine, Thorndyke's colleague Dr Jervis takes over Jardine's locum tenems position pro tem and investigations get under way to find out who is assiduously trying to dispose of Jardine, a man with, so far as he knows, no enemies and with no relatives liable to benefit by his death.

My verdict: The plot unspools into a web of disturbing incidents, unexpected meetings and re-meetings, attempted murders, and a deserted house which nonetheless tells a great deal as the novel rattles up hill and down dale, or rather lane, in a landscape through which move a pretty young artist with a ferocious aunt, a mysterious stranger afflicted with a rare eye disorder, a Jesuit priest seeking news of a missing friend, and a "downy bird" or two of both genders -- not to mention a hidden portrait. There is much following about of various people and sending of telegrams, and, of course, despite lack of clews, Thorndyke cracks the case, although not in time to...but no, I shall say no more.

http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301591.txt

Golden Age Mystery Review: The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley by Louis Tracy

by Mary

Artist John Trenholme is staying in the Hertfordshire village of Roxton, having gone there at the request of a magazine to do paintings of the local area before the railway arrives and ruins everything. His request to thus immortalise a nearby Elizabethan mansion is rebuffed by its owner, Mortimer Fenley, private banker and father of two half-brothers.

Trenholme finds out there's a public right of way across Fenley's parkland and on a lovely June morning he avails himself of it to paint the view -- which includes a young woman in a bathing suit taking a morning dip in the lake. He is thus on the spot to hear the shot that kills Fenley on his own doorstep. At this point one of my favourite sleuthing teams, Superintendent James Leander Winter and Detective Inspector Charles Francois Furneaux, arrive on stage when Scotland Yard is called in by oldest son Hilton Fenley. To add to the family's troubles, both siblings wish to marry their father's beautiful ward Sylvia Manning -- she of the bathing suit -- which worsens the already bad blood between them.

The younger son Robert is a ne'er-do-well who was in London when his father died, or was he? Could the murder be connected to a bond robbery at the Fenley Bank? How was the seemingly impossible crime committed when a prime suspect was known to be in the house when the murderous shot was fired from a wood some 400 yards away?

My verdict: Much as I have enjoyed the Winter & Furneaux stories, I must mark this one as a B. The Fenleys are curiously thin as characters and I felt the lesser players in the drama were more rounded out, probably because Tracy provides a different angle for the traditional supporting cast. Thus for example we have the oft bibulous butler depicted instead as a wine connoisseur and the village bobby as intelligent and quick thinking. On the other hand, the touch of melodrama towards the end of the novel seems somewhat out of place and prospective readers should be aware there are a few comments of an un-PC nature.

Etext: The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley by Louis Tracy

Review: The Albert Gate Mystery by Louis Tracy

by Mary

The Albert Gate Mystery: Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective, by Louis Tracy, begins with a locked, heavily guarded London mansion where more than one crime is committed in a single night, and then moves back and forth over the English Channel and around the Mediterranean.

Barrister Reginald Brett takes note of two items in the morning paper. The first reports an "affair of some magnitude" at a mansion in Albert Gate, London. Details are scanty so speculation is rife but what is known is that a party of high-ranking Turkish gentlemen, servants, and guards are living in the house under strict security. What's more, fourteen expert diamond-cutters have shown up from Amsterdam and are working there daily.

The previous night the Dutch visitors and the various Turkish attendants were detained at Scotland Yard, and Dr. Tennyson Coke, "the greatest living authority on toxicology", is among medical wallahs being consulted by the authorities.

What does it all mean?

Brett thinks it may well be connected to a brief note in the same paper reporting a close relative of the Turkish Sultan has it off to France in suspicious circumstances.

Brett has hardly started to connect the dots when the Earl of Stanhope shows up in an awful bate. It seems his fiancee, Edith Talbot, refuses to marry him until her brother Jack is located and cleared of wrongdoing.The Foreign Office put Jack in charge of arrangements for the Turkish visitors and their priceless gems and not only has Jack disappeared, so have the diamonds -- and five men have been murdered at the mansion, including the Turkish envoy, His Excellency Mehemet Ali Pasha.

And all this takes place before the end of the first chapter!

Brett agrees to take the case and goes to visit Edith Talbot, who tells him that due to the various precautions taken and certain structural alterations made before the Turkish gents arrived it was absolutely impossible for anyone to get into the house except through the front door and an entrance hall where a dozen policemen and an inspector stood guard.

Thus begins a merry chase that ultimately leads Brett and his companions across France and beyond.

My verdict: Fans of the impossible crime will find the explanation is disappointing but Brett is an interesting character. He is an analytical detective of the Holmesian type but deduces information and future actions based upon observation and rumination rather than extensive knowledge of bicycle tracks or cigar ash. Because these feats occur only occasionally in the narrative readers will find them convincing. The Scotland Yard detective turns out not to be so dim-witted as usually thought, and GAD fans will not be surprised at the thorough thrashing administered to a man instrumental in casting mud on the reputation of Edith's brother. One piece of justice meted out towards the close is so fitting that despite possible moral outrage on the part of some readers, bearing in mind the character's attitude (valiantly trying to avoid spoilers) I suspect most of them will laugh out loud....

Etext: The Albert Gate Mystery

Inventing a Religion...or Not

Today at Poe's Deadly Daughters Mary and I write about the time we invented a religion for one of our Byzantine mysteries...or was it really imaginary?

Inventing a Religion...or Not.

The Lord Chamberlain Lives!

by Eric

Our writing has more energy than I do right now. It's still getting out and about. For example, the second ever John the Lord Chamberlain story is now available as an ebook from Head of Zeus. Under the title A Mithraic Mystery it appeared in 1995 in The Mammoth Collection of Historical Whodunnits and Historical Detectives. Our first Byzantine mystery (A Byzantine Mystery!) was a very short puzzle oriented story in which the the Lord Chamberlain was little more than a cypher, and honestly, not much like our subsequent sleuth. (We think it was malicious gossip passed on by Procopios) When editor Mike Ashley asked us for a second tale about John we decided to start fleshing the character out. For the Head of Zeus reissue we did extensive rewriting and we hope it can serve as a short intro to the series under the new title:

The Body in the Mithraeum

Byzantium AD 533: In a secret underground temple, the victim was blindfolded, bound with entrails and cut open with knife. In blood, a scrawled message: 'thus perish all who hate the Lord of Light'. Who could have performed such an abomination? Why has the Empress Theodora taken such a personal interest? John's investigation will lead him into world of hidden cults and lethal palace secrets.

The Body in the Mithraeum at Head of Zeus.

For a much longer intro you can now purchase the first four novels of the series in an e-book "boxed set":

NOTE: We have suggested they might correct the spelling on the cover image!! Consider this .jpg a collector's item.

DEATH IN BYZANTIUM: At the heart of what is left of the Roman Empire, lies a city simmering with intrigue & treachery. Amid this maelstrom stands John, ex-slave, now the right hand of Emperor Justinian. It is John's skills as an investigator that Justinian prizes the most. But the emperor is not a sentimental man. Nor is he a patient one. John knows his position is precarious. One misstep and his enemies may have him. And if they don't, the emperor himself almost certainly will.

ONE FOR SORROW: When the body of a high-ranking treasury official is found in a filthy alley, John's investigation stirs the ghosts of his past and threatens his life.

TWO FOR JOY: John must discover why three of Constantinople's holy stylites have burned to death atop their pillars.

THREE FOR A LETTER: The murder of a child threatens Justinian's dreams of resurrecting the glory of Roman Empire. John will need all his wits to keep his job... and his head.

FOUR FOR A BOY: In this series prequel, John the slave takes his first steps along the dangerous path that will lead him to become Justinian's Lord Chamberlain.

Death in Byzantium

Lastly, Poisoned Pen Press will be publishing Ten for Dying in March, but more about that later.

Review: The Secret House by Edgar Wallace

by Mary

As is usual with Wallace's works, The Secret House gallops off to a cracking good start with a seedy fellow being interviewed for a job as assistant to the editor of a scandal rag called The Gossip's Corner -- an editor whose face is concealed during the interview by a bag-like fine silk veil tied under his chin. That would give most people pause, but the applicant takes it in his stride and gets the job.

Not long afterwards a millionaire named Farrington overhears two men arguing virtually on his doorstep about turning in the notorious blackmailer Montague Fallock, a man of whom there is no known photograph. Suddenly two shots are heard and both men lie dead.

Naturally when the police arrive Farrington's house is searched. Assistant commissioner T. B. Smith of Scotland Yard (who happens to live in the same London square) discovers the millionaire's area door is ajar. Not only that but he also picks up a gold scent bottle with the same perfume he detected in Farrington's hall although it is not that used by Doris Gray, Farrington's niece and ward. The only other clue is a silver locket engraved with a couple of lines whose meaning is unfathomable, discovered on one of the dead men.

Among other characters the reader meets Frank Doughton, who loves Doris, adventurer Count Paltavo, Doughton's rival for her affections, Lady Constance Dex, friend to Farrington and Doris, and Dr Fall, physician to Mr Jim Moole. Mr Moole is the never seen eccentric owner of The Secret House in the village of Great Bradley, and many are the stories told about him.

My verdict: The plot is a rich stew of sinister foreigners, fraud, murder, the search for a missing heir, a most peculiar will left by a suicide, disappearances, rooms that change in the twinkling of the proverbial eye, revenge, and much more besides. While some elements are far-fetched, still it's one of those yarns carrying the reader along at a breakneck pace until an unusual denouement putting Smith in danger of...well, better not say, but as a hint alert the reader to consider the estate on which stands The Secret House.

Etext: http://www.munseys.com/diskfive/sechousedex.htm

FIRE-TONGUE BY SAX ROHMER (REVIEW)

by Mary

If only Sir Charles Abingdon had confided in Paul Harley right away instead of deciding to reveal the full extent of his fears over dinner the following evening...but he didn't and is just about to tell all when he dies at the dinner table. Sir Charles' last words are "Fire-Tongue...Nicol Brinn...."

Nicol Brinn is easy enough to find, being a world-famous daredevil hunter and explorer who's been courting death for years in all parts of the globe, but when Harvey mentions Fire-Tongue he is obviously shaken to his core. Yet he too refuses, for the moment at least, to reveal what he knows of Fire-Tongue. Meantime, Harvey meets and falls for Sir Charles' daughter Phyllis and is not thrilled to hear the effete, hyacinth-loving Persian Ormuz Khan is paying her too much attention, or at least according to views held by British gentlemen on what constitutes proper conduct. It's up to Harvey and Brinn, working with Inspector Wessex and his colleagues, to deduce the mysterious entity's identity and thwart whatever devilish plans he or she is doubtless hatching.

My verdict: Fire-Tongue is curiously subdued for Rohmer. Its solution depends more on deduction and investigation than on fisticuffs, although a chilling chase along a deserted country road and the usual derring-do in an isolated mansion do feature. Part of the back story strays into classic Rohmer territory, which is to say it is more than somewhat far fetched, but here it explains a great deal about a pivotal character. Not a bad read for an idle evening.

Etext: Fire-Tongue

Ronald Standish by Sapper (A Review)

by Mary

Narrated by Bob Miller, this collection of short stories involves his friend Ronald Standish. Wealthy and something of a sportsman -- particularly keen on golf and cricket -- Standish only takes cases that interest him and having done so persists until he solves them or, according to Miller and unusually for amateur detectives, must own himself beaten. His greatest assets when investigations are afoot are an excellent memory for faces and unusual facts and a talent for noticing small details others have missed.

In this entertaining work, Miller relates several investigations undertaken by Standish.

THE CREAKING DOOR tells what it knows and thus aids the discovery of the culprit when an artist is murdered after a scene precipitated by his kissing a girl against her will. The story ends with a rather nasty twist.

THE MISSING CHAUFFEUR works for the Duke of Dorset and has done a bunk the week before Grand Duke Sergius of Russia is due to stay for a few days. A letter written in blood arrives...

Visiting the small Cornish town of St Porodoc,, Standish and Miller hear a strange tale from a young curate who sees a ghost in THE HAUNTED RECTORY. A garden snail points to the solution of the mystery.

Love's young dream is thwarted by lack of cash, and when a valuable tiara is stolen only the suspect's beloved believes him innocent. It takes A MATTER OF TAR to show who was really responsible for the theft and associated assault.

The sister of one of Standish's fellow cricket-players consults the detective about her new neighbour, who runs a boarding kennel but mistakes an Irish terrier for an Airedale -- and reacts with fury when corrected. And whose is the terrified face seen peering from a window of THE HOUSE WITH THE KENNELS?

Standish is consulted about a letter his client's uncle received instructing certain papers be left in a specified place. Not long afterwards the uncle fell to his death, his son came into the estate, is sent an identical communication, and in turns dies. What will THE THIRD MESSAGE say?

It takes Standish some thought to solve THE MYSTERY OF THE SLIP COACH, wherein a man is found shot to death on a train with a smashed egg splashed about his compartment in a nice example of the locked room mystery.

An extremely unpopular village resident is found murdered and nobody mourns him. It looks bad for the man with more than one reason for a grudge against the departed. THE SECOND DOG provides the clue clinching the solution to a case of revenge....

Threats from Indian priests over disrespectful behaviour toward temple dancing girls follow a man who has returned to England and who now fears for the safety of his niece at the hands of THE MAN IN YELLOW seen flitting about the house and yet never found.

A blackmailing cur is brought to book by THE MAN WITH SAMPLES in a story getting my vote for the best in the collection, not least because of the method used to catch him, which neatly sidesteps a situation in which as is usual with blackmail his victims are very reluctant to involve the police.

When a retired businessman purchases THE EMPTY HOUSE and arranges for its renovation, incidents of vandalism begin and he receives warnings he will regret taking up residence, escalating in an attempt to run him down. Yet what could be the reason?

An obnoxious landowner is found drowned in THE TIDAL RIVER and a young man is brought to trial on charges of murdering him in what appears to be an open and shut case. But Standish casts his line out for other fish..

My verdict: An enjoyable read presenting challenges of various degrees to those who enjoy trying to guess whodunnit. Standish is more of a cerebral detective than a scientific sleuth, which will add interest for those who like their crimes solved without bubbling test tubes or advanced electrical whatnots getting involved.

Etext: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0607761.txt