Malko 4: Malko versus the CIA

Malko 4: Malko versus the CIA is one of the handful of Malko spy thrillers by Gerard de Villiers that have been translated into English. It was originally published in French in 1965 as S.A.S. contre C.I.A. and the English translation dates from 1974.

His Serene Highness Prince Malko Ligne, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight of the Black Eagle, Knight of the Order of Landgrave Seraphim of Kletgaus, Knight of the Order of Malta works on a semi-official basis for the C.I.A. - semi-official so that the C.I.A. can plausibly deny everything afterwards. They trust Malko because he’s reliably anti-communist. Malko has no great interest in causes and he regards the C.I.A. with a certain amount of European aristocratic disdain but they pay well and he needs the money to repair his crumbling ancestral castle. He also likes women, the sorts of women who cost as much to maintain as a decaying castle.

French spy fiction of this period is interesting because the C.I.A. are not automatically the good guys and the Soviets are not automatically the bad guys. In this book the Russians are more or less good guys but mostly they just want to avoid getting mixed up in a mess that the Americans have created.

The mess is in Iran. This novel was written in 1965, years before the Islamic Revolution. Iran is under the control of the Shah, who was installed in power by the C.I.A. some years before. The Shah is little more than Washington’s puppet.

In this novel Malko is working for the C.I.A. to foil a plot by - the C.I.A. More specifically they have information that the C.I.A.’s Iranian bureau chief General Schalberg has hatched a plan to overthrow the government of Iran, on his own initiative. Given that Iran is a reliable U.S. puppet state this information is very upsetting. The worst thing is that the C.I.A. really don’t know exactly what is going on. General Schalberg might be the instigator of the crazy plot. The head of the Iranian secret police, General Khadjar, might be involved. The Russians might have fed the Americans phoney information about this plot. The Iranian communists are probably not involved since the Shah has had almost all of them killed.

The plot might involve the assassination of the Shah. And revolution. Revolutions are easy to set off but not so easy to control.

It doesn’t matter who originated the plot, it must be stopped. If Malko needs to do some killing that’s OK. That’s why the C.I.A. gives him these jobs - dirty jobs are his specialty. If he has to kill the rogue C.I.A. guy that’s OK as well.

Of course you know that Malko is going to get mixed up wth beautiful dangerous women. Beautiful Iranian women can be very dangerous - they tend to have husbands, fathers or brothers who don’t approve of decadent European aristocrats bedding their women. But you know Malko won’t be able to help himself.

There’s plenty of action including a wild aerial climax. There’s a full-scale gun battle. There is mayhem in the streets. Malko has narrow escapes. He is up against people for whom torture is not just a policy but an absorbing hobby.

In this adventure Malko doesn’t have to worry too much about the morality of any of the people or factions involved. They’re all equally amoral. It doesn’t matter if revolution against the Shah is justified or not - if the country explodes it will be a disaster for everybody. All Malko has to worry about is preventing that explosion.

I’m becoming a major fan of the Malko thrillers. They feature a hero who’s a bit morally ambiguous and somewhat ruthless but charming and deadly. Plenty of thrills. Some sexiness. Exotic settings. Interesting historical backgrounds. Morally complex stories. What’s not to love? Malko versus the CIA is an above-average spy thriller and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three other Malko novels - West of Jerusalem, The Man from Kabul and Angel of Vengeance.

Gerald Vance’s Too Many Worlds

Gerald Vance’s Too Many Worlds was published in Amazing Stories in December 1952. Except that there was no such person as Gerald Vance. It was a Ziff-Davis Publishing house name used by lots of writers. Nobody is sure of the identity of the author of this book although Berkeley Livingston has been suggested. It does have a very similar feel to Livingston’s Queen of the Panther World, and it has the same flaws which we’ll get to later.

It begins with married couple Roger and Lydia Sherman inviting their friend Wayne to joining them on an adventure. It will be quite an adventure - a journey to another dimension or a parallel universe. Roger and Lydia are not quite sure which it is. They’ve invented a machine that can take them to strange new worlds but they themselves don’t understand the science behind the invention. Wayne thinks it sounds silly but he goes along anyway.

A nice touch is that the inter-dimensional travel machine is just the Shermans’ living room. They have made some high-tech alterations to it but it still just looks like a living room.

The three end up on a planet of giants and endless wars. It’s an Earth-like planet but it’s definitely not Earth and the inhabitants are fairly human-like but definitely not quite human.

There are several tribes and they fight these wars because that’s what they’ve always done. Naturally our travellers from Earth are caught in the middle. One tribe is particularly aggressive and is led by a man who is clearly mad and evil. There’s also a High Priest, who is more ambigous.

Roger and Lydia are of course captured and threatened with dire fates. Lydia has her clothes torn off so she has a fair idea of the fate in store for her.

Our Earth travellers do form an alliance with that seems to be the most friendly tribe. And they encounter a beautiful queen. Not a beautiful evil queen. She’s a beautiful noble virtuous queen. Wayne takes quite a shine to her, and the queen thinks Wayne is quite a man.

It all leads up to an epic climactic battle.

Another problem facing our earthly trio is that there is a time factor involved if they hope to return to Earth.

Armchair Fiction have made a huge number of pulp science fiction novels available to modern readers and a very high proportion of them really are either neglected gems or at the least very very good stories. Others however are merely routine.

Too Many Worlds falls into the routine class. The characters are just standard stock types. The setup has been used by other writers and used with much more style and flair. The world-building is unimaginative. This other dimension is simply Earth with taller people with bluish-tinted skin, plus six-legged horses. This world does not feel truly alien and its inhabitants do not feel truly alien. A major weakness is that the queen seems totally human and of normal stature for a human woman but the reason for this is never explained (except that she is intended as the love interest for the hero).

It’s not a terrible book. There’s some reasonable action. It has a certain amount of energy. It just doesn’t have anything that is likely to grab the reader’s attention. It’s competent by-the-numbers stuff. It’s interesting mostly as an example of lesser pulp science fiction which serves to illustrate the difference between inspired pulp writing and routine pulp writing. It’s hard to recommend this one.

Armchair Fiction have paired this short novel with Charles Eric Maine’s novel Wall of Fire (which I have not yet read) in a two-novel paperback edition.

Some Armchair Fiction science fiction pulp reprints that I do highly recommend include Paul W. Fairman’s The Girl Who Loved Death, Henry Kuttner’s Crypt-City of the Deathless One, Into the Fourth Dimension by Ray Cummings, Lester Del Rey’s Pursuit, J.F. Bone's Second Chance and Emmett McDowell's Citadel of the Green Death.

Malko 3: Man from Kabul

Malko 3: Man from Kabul is one of the handful of Malko spy thrillers by Gerard de Villiers that have been translated into English. It was the 25th of his 200 Malko novels and was originally published in French as L'Homme de Kabul in 1972.

The hero of the Malko series is His Serene Highness Prince Malko Ligne, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight of the Black Eagle, Knight of the Order of Landgrave Seraphim of Kletgaus, Knight of the Order of Malta. He needs money to maintain his castle, and his women. He is not on the C.I.A. payroll but he does jobs for them, jobs too awkward for the C.I.A. to handle directly. Malko is a loyal employee although he regards the C.I.A. with a certain amount of distaste. He is an aristocrat and a gentleman. His ethical standards are flexible but unlike the C.I.A. he does have some morals.

The first thing to bear in mind is that when the novel was written in 1971 Afghanistan was still a kingdom, trying to maintain friendly relations with both sides in the Cold War.

An Australian freelance spy has some important information he wants to sell to the C.I.A. but he is killed trying to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. His information does reach the C.I.A. and causes great excitement. An aircraft en route from China crash-landed in a very remote spot. There was something (or someone) aboard that aircraft that the Americans, the Chinese and the Russians all want very much. The Afghans want it too. They could exchange it with any of those powers in return for important diplomatic advantages.

The Americans want that person but they cannot act officially. They employ Malko to get it for them.

His plan is fairly simple although it will involve a great deal of mayhem.

Malko’s assignments always bring him into contact with beautiful, morally ambiguous, fascinating and dangerous women. This case is no exception. There’s a gorgeous Afghan girl. She’s dangerous because her uncle runs the Afghan security service, and her cousin will kill any man who tries to persuade her into bed. That’s awkward because Malko would very much like to bed her.

There’s also the bald German girl, Birgitta. She’s bald but stunningly beautiful and very sexy. She’s the mistress of a colonel in the Afghan intelligence agency. He’s German as well. He’s also very jealous and very very dangerous. Withy a definite cruel streak.

Of course there are attempted double-crosses. With four players in the game (the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese and the Afghans) there’s plenty of potential for really complicated double-crosses. Especially when it’s not clear that all four players are have totally different objectives.

What makes the Malko books so interesting is that they are written by a Frenchman who views the Cold War from a neutral outsiders’ perspective. You cannot assume that the author thinks of the Americans as the good guys or the Russians and Chinese as the bad guys. Espionage is a grubby vicious game whoever plays it and all sides play dirty. There’s no morality at all in the world of espionage.

Malko himself views the Cold War from an outsider’s perspective. He works for the C.I.A. because they pay well and he needs the money. He has no ideological agenda. He regards all sides with aristocratic disdain. He is often sickened by the things he finds himself doing. Malko is mercenary and he’s loyal to his employer but he dislikes his work. He has a taste for danger and adventure but he would have been more at home in an earlier era when a gentleman could indulge such tastes without compromising his sense of honour.

In this book Malko is appalled by the C.I.A.’s casual use of torture.

The cynicism of de Villiers goes beyond anything you will find in British or American spy writers such as Len Deighton. Malko cannot console himself with the thought that our side might do bad things but the other side is worse. He cannot console himself with the thought that he is doing bad things for a good cause. He knows that he is doing bad things for money. He is a kind of anti-hero. He is determined not to abandon his sense of honour completely but in his heart he knows he has morally compromised himself. He feels dirty.

And in Malko’s world nice people get hurt very very badly. In this novel a very nice people suffers an appalling fate.

This is intelligent provocative spy fiction. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the slightly earlier Malko: West of Jerusalem and also Malko 5: Angel of Vengence.

Malko: West of Jerusalem

SAS à l'ouest de Jérusalem was the ninth of the Malko secret agent thrillers written by French former newspaper reporter Gérard de Villiers (1929-2013). It was published in 1967 and was translated into English as Malko: West of Jerusalem in 1969.

The Malko series ran to 200 novels and was hugely popular.

The hero is Malko Linge, an Austrian prince. He does jobs for the CIA but he isn’t actually employed by them. His motivation is money. The family castle needs to be restored and he needs a lot of money. Despite this he has a reputation for honesty and reliability.

The book opens with the Director of the CIA, Foster Hillman, jumping out of a window to his death. This causes a major crisis. He had no health or money problems and no entanglements with women. Is it possible he killed himself because he had turned traitor and was about to be exposed? This seems impossible. Hillman was an all-American patriot and all-round great guy. But it would be a plausible explanation for his suicide. There’s also the possibility he was being blackmailed.

The CIA decides to keep his death a secret and Malko is given the job of impersonating Hillman on the telephone, using a high-tech gizmo that can copy anybody’s speech patterns exactly.

After receiving a mysterious phone call from a woman Malko sets up a meeting with her but it all goes horribly wrong. He does however now have a lead, a lead that points to the Middle East. Soon there’s another lead - a woman’s amputated finger. There’s been a kidnapping and it is connected in some way with Foster Hillman.

Malko ends up in Sardinia, infiltrating the vast estate owned by a lecherous Middle Eastern emir. Malko knows he’s on to something when somebody tries to kill him.

It was 1964 when de Villiers started writing the Malko novels so there’s an obvious Bond influence. There are exotic settings and rich powerful men with evil plans, there are glamorous women.There’s that slight hint of sadism that is often associated with Bond. There’s also plenty of sex.

It takes a while for the action to kick in but when it does it’s pretty good. There are speedboat chases and helicopters, the occasional explosion and an abundance of gunplay.

There’s a cool scene with crocodiles.

There are also some rather dark and even grim moments.

The decadence of the Jet Set plays a major part in the story and there’s even an orgy.

Malko is a standard Bond-style secret agent hero - he’s debonair, always exquisitely dressed, he’s sophisticated and he’s tough. He definitely has an eye for the ladies and they find him very attractive.

Mercifully de Villiers doesn’t get heavily into politics. The Middle Eastern background adds an air of mystery and intrigue and an excuse for a solid espionage plot. That plot isn’t overly complex but it works.

There are clear-cut bad guys and they’re suitably sinister and vicious. And colourful.

Reading a book in translation obviously makes it impossible to say anything about the prose. It is however obvious that de Villiers knew how to handle action and suspense.

This is a very competent spy thriller and definitely belongs to the high adventure school of spy fiction rather than the dark and gritty and cynical school. Highly recommended.

Harl Vincent's Before the Asteroids

Harl Vincent was a pseudonym used by American engineer and pulp science fiction writer Harold Vincent Schoepflin (1893-1968). His short novel Before the Asteroids was published in Science Wonder Stories in March 1930.

Before the Asteroids takes place in our own solar system, half a million years ago. There were at that time two planets which were home to advanced technological civilisations, Arin (now known as Mars) and Voris (a now-vanished planet orbiting the Sun where the Asteroid Belt now lies). The people of Arin are peace-loving but Voris is ruled by the ambitious and ruthless Olar.

Young Prince Ronal of Arin has been sent to Voris, carrying a false passport. hIs old tutor Antes suspects that Voris is plotting war. Ronal’s job is to find out whether or not this is true. Ronal immediately falls in love with the beautiful Vorisian Princess Ila. Ila wants peace between Arin and Voris and she has reason to hate her cruel father.

The Vorisians are indeed planning war. Ronal escapes just in time, taking Ila with him.

The war involves lots of aerial battles, lots of poison gases and ray projectors and lots of stuff getting blown up. Both sides seem evenly matched until the wise old Antides comes up with a super-weapon. If it works, Arin might be saved.

But there’s another problem. Both planets are about to pass through a gaseous nebula which will freeze every living thing.

Ronal is your typical noble young prince. His father is your typical wise and benevolent king. Olar is a typical villain. Ila is beautiful but also brave and noble.

This is fairly routine 190s pulp science fiction stuff. On the plus side the story moves along quickly.

The prose style is pure pulp.

This is one of those science fiction novels in which it is assumed advanced technological civilisations will be monarchies. Because if you don’t have a monarchy you can’t have beautiful princesses, and where would your story be without a beautiful princess? There’s not much in the way of world-building in this novel. Apart from the fact that they’re the bad guys the Vorisians seem pretty much like the Arinians. Both civilisations have death rays and advanced spacecraft propelled by mysterious rays and protective force fields.

The assumption that Mars half a million years ago was fertile and had an Earth-like atmosphere was still scientifically at least vaguely plausible in 1930. The assumption that the “canals” of Mars were real canals was also fairly plausible. The author was an engineer and he comes up with or two ideas for future technologies (such as the means of interplanetary transportation used by both planets) that are moderately interesting if far-fetched. He doesn’t try to blind us with too much technobabble - he just assumes that ideas like death rays work and gets on with the story.

The story can be seen as an attempt to explain some things about our solar system which seemed puzzling nearly a century ago. The attempted explanations are reasonably ingenious and they’re the most interesting aspects of the novel.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with Marius’s The Sixth Glacier in a double-header paperback.

Before the Asteroids isn’t great science fiction but it has plenty of action and it’s maybe worth a look if you’re in the mood for something seriously pulpy with a few good ideas.

Robert van Gulik’s The Red Pavilion

The Red Pavilion, published in 1961, is one of Robert van Gulik’s wonderful Judge Dee mysteries. It follows the usual pattern, with Judge Dee investigating three cases at the same time. And this novel includes a locked-room mystery!

Judge Dee had figured in a classic 18th-century Chinese detective novel, Dee Goong An, which van Gulik translated into English as Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee. The character of Judge Dee was based on a real 7th century magistrate of the Tang Dynasty. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee was a major success and van Gulik subsequently wrote a series of modern Judge Dee novels, written partly at least in conformity with the conventions of the 18th-century Chinese detective story.

The Red Pavilion opens with Judge Dee and his faithful reformed-criminal assistant Ma Joong passing through Paradise Island. Paradise Island is an entertainment resort. The entertainment comprises high-stakes gambling and high-class prostitutes. It’s all perfectly legal and while Judge Dee doesn’t personally approve he takes the sensible attitude that prostitution conducted in an orderly manner is overall a benefit to society.

There’s a festival going on and the only accommodation available is the Red Pavilion. It turns out to be most comfortable although the judge is puzzled by the fact that the interior doors haver locks on him. It is explained to him that those who rent the Red Pavilion value their privacy.

The judge encounters a young woman on his verandah. She’s hard to miss. She’s very beautiful and she’s wearing a robe so thin as to be almost transparent. At the moment the robe is wet so it’s entirely transparent and the judge notes that she is wearing nothing whatever underneath the robe. Dee is mildly annoyed until the young woman informs him that she is the current Queen Flower. The Queen Flower is selected from amongst the island’s most celebrated courtesans. It’s not jut an empty honour. It carries great social weight on an island devoted to pleasure. The reigning Queen Flower is not a person one should offend and Dee has great respect for the social conventions. After making sure that Dee has had a really good look at her near-naked body she departs but the judge notices that she seems nervous.

Dee intended to stay just one night on Paradise Island but his old friend Lo, the local magistrate, asks him to take over the investigation of a case of suicide. A young man named Lee, a newly appointed Academician, cut his throat over love for the courtesan Autumn Flower. Autumn Flower turns out to be none other than the Queen Flower Dee has already met. It’s a straightforward case. Young men kill themselves over women all the time. And Autumn Flower is an exceptionally beautiful woman well versed in the art of love so it’s not unreasonable to suppose that she could drive a man to madness and suicide. It all seems very straightforward until Dee makes a horrible discovery in the Red Pavilion. The discovery of this corpse raises serious doubts in Dee’s mind about the supposed suicide of Academician Lee.

Dee is even more concerned to learn that there have in fact been three mysterious deaths in the Red Pavilion. All appeared to be suicides, but Dee now suspects that all three were cases of murder. Dee starts to wonder about a few other things as well, such as the rapid departure of an important local official.

Dee painstakingly constructs fairy satisfactory theories to account for all three deaths, but there’s always at least one clue for which the theories do not account. Those clues simply cannot be accounted for at all. That means that Dee’s theories must be partially, or even completely, wrong.

The three murders are all related in some way but are they directly related? Is there one killer or several? Dee is not sure. And this is a Robert van Gulik Judge Dee mystery, which means it is an attempt to conform party to the conventions of the classic western puzzle-plot mystery and partly to the conventions of Chinese detective stories. The reader cannot be entirely certain that assumptions about the solution based on the conventions of western mysteries will prove to be correct.

There are both physical clues and psychological clues in abundance. Autopsies conducted on two of the victims provide Dee with headaches because they reveal things he expected and things he didn’t expect. The Red Pavilion itself provides some important but deceptive clues.

With van Gulik you also get more than just a mystery. You get some fascinating glimpses into Chinese history, culture and jurisprudence (subjects on which van Gulik was extremely knowledgeable), an occasional aside on the subject of Chinese art (on which van Gulik was an acknowledged authority) and some reflections on love, sex and marriage (and van Gulik wrote an important scholarly work on that subject as well).

In this case you certainly get an intricate plot. There are three locked-room puzzles. Two are childishly simple. The third is much trickier. This book is not really a locked-room mystery in the sense of having a locked-room puzzle as the central element. It does however serve a vital plot purpose. The plotting is quite effective with an ending that probably won’t be at all the sort of ending you’re expecting.

As always Ma Joong provides some entertainment. He falls in love with a courtesan named Silver Fairy but that gets complicated as well. In this novel love and sex make life very complicated. More fun is provided by Crab and Shrimp, two oddly likeable strong-arm men employed by the island’s warden.

This is van Gulik at the top of his game - a good mystery but a novel that offers a bit more than a straightforward mystery. Very highly recommended.

You might also want to check out TomCat’s glowing review at Beneath the Stains of Time.

Robert van Gulik's The Chinese Nail Murders

Robert van Gulik (1910-1967) was a Dutch diplomat, orientalist scholar and writer whose first literary endeavour was his translation into English of the 18th century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An. Published as Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee in 1949 it was a major success. The Chinese novel had been based on the career of the famous real life magistrate and statesman of the Tang Dynasty Dee Jen-djieh (630-700). The success of Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee inspired van Gulik to try his hand at a series of detective novels featuring Judge Dee. His idea was to keep as much of the flavour of traditional Chinese detective fiction as possible (such as the device of having Judge Dee working on three more or less unrelated cases simultaneously) while making his books more palatable for modern readers by largely dropping the supernatural elements.

The fifth of van Gulik’s Judge Dee novels was The Chinese Nail Murders, published in 1961. Dee has just been appointed magistrate of Pei-chow in northern China. In Imperial China the magistrate acted as a combination of judge, jury, district attorney and police detective. As usual Dee is assisted by the faithful Sergeant Hoong and his three underlings Ma Joong, Chiao Tai and Tao Gan (all reformed criminals).

And as usual Judge Dee has three cases to deal with, the most troubling being the discovery of the headless body of a woman. The woman’s husband has been accused of her murder. Judge Dee always pays close attention to the scene of a crime and he finds a number of puzzling items.

There is also the disappearance of a young woman in broad daylight. While his investigations into the first two cases are still proceeding the third case comes along, the poisoning murder of a very respected citizen. He may have left a very cryptic (and clever) dying clue.

There are some tenuous links between at least two of the cases. There’s also a minor case involving blackmail and two girls sold into prostitution which sheds unexpected light on one of the main cases. Of course it’s possible that other links between the three cases may come to light.

Judge Dee and his assistants undertake their investigations in a rigorous and logical manner. Autopsies are performed. Care is taken that crime scenes are not prematurely disturbed and the crime scenes are thoroughly searched for clues. Witnesses are interviewed. All possible leads, no matter how irrelevant they might seem, are followed up. Most importantly Judge Dee does not jump to conclusions. He is very much aware that things are not always exactly how they seem to be. In other words the novel can be seen as a kind of police procedural.

While the Dee Goong An was set in the days of the Tang Dynasty, in the seventh century, it was written a thousand years later and the historical background was a mixture of various time periods. In his Judge Dee novels van Gulik was also not overly concerned to get the historical details of the Tang period absolutely correct although he was certainly knowledgeable enough about Chinese history to have done so. He wanted to preserve the same mixture of elements of different historical eras that he had found in the Dee Goong An.

Chinese detective tales often had very strong supernatural elements, with vital evidence being provided by the testimony of ghosts. Van Gulik realised that modern readers of detective stories would be alienated by such devices but at the same time he was writing about historical periods in which the supernatural was taken for granted. In The Chinese Nail Murders Judge Dee discovers that sorcery is still practised in Pei-chow. This plays no actual rôle in the story but does add a hint of an exotic flavour. There is a kind of prologue however which contains much stronger hints of the supernatural.

Van Gulik’s Judge Dee novels were detective fiction but they were also historical fiction. There is absolutely no point in an author’s writing historical fiction unless he makes a genuine attempt to convey the differentness of the historical period he has chosen. If the characters are just 21st century characters wearing historical costumes the whole thing is a waste of time. Which is why it is no longer possible to write historical fiction. Today publishers insist that the characters must be 21st century characters with 21st century attitudes, values and social and sexual mores. In the 1950s and 1960s it was however still possible to attempt actual historical fiction and van Gulik does make a genuine attempt to convince us that we are reading about a different culture in which people really do have beliefs, values and social and sexual mores that are sharply differentiated from ours.

In The Chinese Nail Murders we encounter a system of criminal justice that is in its own way efficient and just but there are certain things that Judge Dee takes for granted that would hardly be accepted today - such as flogging uncooperative witnesses. And a key point in the novel hinges on a very dramatic difference between the Imperial Chinese legal system and modern systems (although I can’t offer you any hint as to what that difference is without revealing a vital spoiler). Judge Dee can be merciful but he can also be (to modern ways of thinking) extraordinarily severe. And even his ideas on being merciful will seem alien in many ways.

Judge Dee is a devoted family man and loves all three of his wives. He loves them in his own peculiar unsentimental way. For Dee everything comes down to duty - duty to family, to one’s ancestors and to the Imperial Government. Personal happiness is of little importance. Dee is not bothered by prostitution but he is shocked and enraged by the thought of a man having sex with his fiancée before the wedding.

Van Gulik took many of his plot elements from ancient case-books or from traditional Chinese detective stories and he very deliberately tried to emulate the style and structure of those stories although adapted to modern tastes (Chinese detective stories were usually inverted mysteries but van Gulik preferred the more conventional western method of concealing the murderer’s identity until the end and he tried to make his novels as fair-play as he could). The somewhat sparse and formal style of his novels is a conscious choice.

The Chinese Nail Murders offers much to enjoy - three clever murder plots, an exotic setting, a unique detective hero and a glimpse into a very different culture. Highly recommended.

John Vandercook's Murder in Trinidad

John Vandercook (1902-63) was an American author and journalist who, between 1933 and 1959, wrote four murder mysteries featuring his series detective Bertram Lynch. Murder in Trinidad was the first of his detective novels. Rather extraordinarily it seems to have been the subject of no less than three movie adaptations!

The narrator is a young American mediaeval historian named Robert Deane. It is on the steamer from New York to Trinidad that he first notices Englishman Bertram Lynch. He notices him because he is so very ordinary. He is simply too ordinary to be true, and there are one or two very minor indications that Lynch is actually a man who is very far from being ordinary. Lynch is in fact a special investigator for the League of Nations and his area of responsibility is drug trafficking. This is what has brought him to Trinidad. There are, he tells Deane, 120,000 Hindu labourers in Trinidad and opium is a very major problem.

Trinidad was of course at this time still very much part of the British Empire.

Lynch’s arrival in Trinidad was supposed to be very hush-hush but when an attempt is made to kill him just a few hours after his arrival it is obvious that someone at least is aware of his presence on the island. Someone who is not on the side of law and order. Lynch usually works alone but on this occasion, forced to change his plans quickly, he is happy to recruit an amateur assistant and Robert Deane is delighted by be given the opportunity to play at being a detective.

The first half of the book is very much in the thriller mould, in fact somewhat in the outrageous mould of Edgar Wallace. Lynch and Deane have all sorts of adventures in the wilds of the Caroni Swamp. This is an impenetrable mangrove swamp, but it’s not just impenetrable, it’s deadly. One false step and you’re engulfed by the quickmud (like quicksand except worse). The Caroni Swamp is also home to several varieties of extremely deadly snakes. No-one has ever explored this swamp. It cannot even be investigated from the air - the peculiar geography of the area sets up air currents so frightening that no pilot will risk overflying the swamp.

There is a local legend that somewhere in the heart of the Caroni Swamp there is an island and that on the island is an outlaw town that is home to smugglers and was at one time a haunt of pirates. Of course it’s just a story that is told to gullible tourists. Or is it? Bertram Lynch suspects that the legend is true. In fact Lynch and Deane will soon discover that the truth is evert bit as extraordinary as the legend and they will have numerous narrow escapes from death.

This is all jolly good fun if you enjoy dicing with death but there is a crime to be investigated. There is the matter of the opium smuggling but there is also a murder. A murder that took place many years earlier. At least that’s when the first murder occurred. The second murder took place almost at the moment of Lynch’s arrival in Trinidad. And there is a genuine golden age of detection puzzle plot here. Including floor plans!

Deane is an obvious Dr Watson character. Lynch certainly bears more than a passing resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. Like Holmes he is a master of disguise. And like Holmes he is intellectually arrogant, except that Lynch makes Holmes seem modest and self-effacing. Deane actually derives a certain amount of amusement from Lynch’s rampant egomania. Lynch is also a very unconventional detective. He operates more like a secret agent than a policeman, and his disregard for the law and for ordinary morality is breath-taking. Lynch considers his job to be so important that he is not obliged to worry about such irritating details. He’s one of the good guys so he’s allowed to break the rules. That’s not to say that he’s an anti-hero but his methods are at times hardly ethical.

Despite being apparently a dull little middle-aged man Lynch is more of an action hero than the average golden age fictional detective. He leaves a trail of mayhem behind him.

Having started out as a thriller and then become a puzzle-plot mystery it reverts to its thriller roots towards the end before the puzzle finally gets solved. Unfortunately the identity of the criminal is terribly obvious. The crucial clue is amusing though.

Trinidad is an interesting enough setting but it’s the Caroni Swamp and the hidden world at the heart of that swamp that are the highlights of the book. The ending offers us yet another bizarre and unusual setting but I won’t spoilt it by saying any more.

Murder in Trinidad is all over the place and I’m not sure I could describe it as being a good book or an entirely successful one but it’s offbeat and it’s fun and it’s worth a look if you don’t mind the fact that it works better as a thriller than as a detective story.

Tomcat's review of the second Bertram Lynch book, Murder in Fiji, at Beneath the Stains of Time makes it sound like it might be a bit more of a puzzle-plot mystery than Murder in Trinidad.

S.S. Van Dine’s The Casino Murder Case

The Casino Murder Case was the eighth of S.S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance mysteries. While the theory has been advanced that the quality of the Philo Vance books declined precipitately towards the end of the series I found this 1934 entry to be more than satisfactory.

It begins with Vance receiving a typewritten letter warning him that some unspecified doom is about to descend of the wealthy Llewellyn family. It’s the sort of letter that might well have been sent by a crank but there’s something about it that worries Vance. The note particularly warns Vance to keep an eye on young Lynn Llewellyn on the following night when he will be visiting his uncle Richard Kincaid’s casino.

The young man does indeed suffer a serious misfortune after winning big at the casino. The really odd thing is that his wife suffers the same misfortune at the same moment, on the opposite side of the city. In both cases poison is involved but how could someone poison two people simultaneously miles apart?

And the poisoner has not yet completed his (or her) work for the evening.

Right from the start Vance has the feeling that both he and the police are being toyed with, but in a very subtle and ingenious way. There are clues that seem too obvious, but are they deliberately intended to seem too obvious? Is the killer trying to point Vance in a particular direction, or simply trying to make Vance think that he is doing so?

There have been three poisonings, but only one was successful. There are possible motives but none that seem sufficient to lead to murder. On the other hand there are so many complex personal dislikes and resentments within the family and their circle of hangers-on that nobody can really be eliminated from suspicion.

The murder methods seem more conventional than in Van Dine’s other novels but he makes up for this by making the circumstances surrounding the murders and attempted murders so puzzling. And once Vance starts to come up with possible solutions we find that they’re not so conventional after all.

As always with Van Dine the crimes take place among the rich and famous. Glamorous settings were an essential part of the Van Dine formula. That’s something I don’t have a problem with. One of the privileges of being rich is that if you want to commit murder you can do so in an imaginative and stylish manner. Murder might be unpleasant but there’s no reason for it to be commonplace or sordid.

Vance is in fine form, fretting about cultural influences on ancient Sumerian civilisation and missing out on dog trials (we already know from The Kennel Murder Case that Vance has a passion for dogs), and on the vanity of human passions. He also indulges himself in frequent biblical allusions.

As usual his friend, District Attorney John F.-X. Markham, is mystified by the workings of Vance’s mind. Sergeant Heath of the Homicide Squad is equally mystified but he’s accustomed to Vance’s peculiar methods.

Psychology certainly plays a role in this story. Vance is sure that if he can understand why the murderer has carried out the crimes in a particular way he can crack the case. The difficulty is that he’s dealing with a group of people all of whom are perhaps slightly psychologically abnormal.

This one doesn’t have the over-the-top baroque flourishes of The Scarab Murder Case or The Dragon Murder Case but it does have a pleasingly fiendish plot. Highly recommended.

Robert van Gulik's The Chinese Gold Murders

Robert van Gulik (1910-1967) was a Dutch diplomat who had a very successful parallel career as a writer of the Judge Dee mystery novels. His career as a mystery writer began in the late 1940s with his translation into English (under the title Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee) of the 18th century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An. Van Gulik felt that Judge Dee was a character with great potential and he tried his hand at writing an original Judge Dee detective novel, The Chinese Maze Murders. Many more were to follow. The third of his original Judge Dee mysteries was The Chinese Gold Murders, published in 1959.

Van Gulik wrote his novels in English. The early Judge Dee novels appeared first in Chinese and Japanese translations but it soon became apparent that the more sensible approach was to publish the English language versions first.

Van Gulik’s idea was to retain as many of the features of the traditional Chinese detective novels (or gong'an) as possible, but presented in a way that would make them more accessible to modern readers. Judge Dee always has three cases that he must solve simultaneously. There are hints of the supernatural but these are toned down considerably. (although not eliminated altogether).

The Judge Dee stories are set in the seventh century AD during the Tang dynasty but as in  the Dee Goong An much of the detail is representative of later eras.

Judge Dee is a magistrate but his duties go beyond judging cases. He is also in charge of the investigation of crimes. He’s like a judge, a District Attorney and a police officer all at once.

The Chinese Gold Murders deals with three early cases that Judge Dee deals with after his appointment as magistrate of the town of Peng-lai. The first and most urgent case is to solve the murder of his predecessor in the magistrate’s post, who was poisoned although there seems to be have been no possible way that the poisoning could have taken place. This certainly qualifies as an impossible crime story.

He also must discover the whereabouts of a missing bride, and the whereabouts of his own chief clerk, as well as solving the puzzle of the body of a dead Buddhist monk. There’s another murder as well plus there’s a man-eating tiger to worry about. Not to mention the possibility of a major smuggling ring. And what is a Korean prostitute doing in possession of official court papers?

As always Dee can rely on the services of the indefatigable Sergeant Hoong and in this novel he acquires two very useful assistants, both former highwaymen.

The idea of three mysteries running in parallel works quite well and adds a touch of realism. Unlike 20th century amateur detectives a district magistrate like Judge Dee would not have the luxury of being able to concentrate all of his attentions on a single case. There are also possible links between the three main cases.

The solutions to some of the puzzles were apparently drawn from the extensive Chinese detective literature so if the explanation for the impossible murder might seem a little far-fetched that’s not Van Gulik’s fault. And the murder method is just about plausible, and it’s certainly ingenious.

The Chinese setting is fascinating and while the details are not always authentically of the Tang Dynasty Van Gulik did have an extensive knowledge of Chinese jurisprudence so those details can be assumed to be basically correct. 

Dee’s techniques are those you expect from a western detective - common sense, observation, interviews with suspects, examinations of the scenes of the crimes, considerations of motives and logical reasoning but they’re combined with a couple of novel methods. Judge Dee is prepared to accept hints with a supernatural (or possibly supernatural) source and he’s also willing to employ torture, torture being regarded during the Imperial period in China as a perfectly legitimate means of obtaining information. Torture was also considered to be essential for procuring a confession, it being impossible to convict someone of a crime without a confession.

The idea of a fair-play mystery was of course quite unknown in traditional Chinese detective fiction. Since that’s the feel Van Gulik is aiming for it’s hardly reasonable to complain if the story does not conform to more modern notions of fair play.

The Chinese Gold Murders is wonderfully entertaining. Highly recommended.

Louis Joseph Vance's The False Faces

While Simon Templar (the Saint) might be the most famous fictional example of the criminal turned crime-fighter he had several illustrious predecessors. One of the more notable was Michael Lanyard, known as the Lone Wolf. This character featured in eight books by Louis Joseph Vance published between 1914 and 1934. The False Faces was the second book in the cycle, appearing in 1918.

Louis Joseph Vance (1879-1933) was a popular American writer until his tragic accidental death.

The hero of this series is Michael Lanyard, English-born but raised in sordid and disreputable circumstances in Paris. As a young man he turned to crime, with great success. As the Lone Wolf he became the most glamorous and most famed jewel thief in Paris. His early life is covered in some detail in the first novel in the series, The Lone Wolf. He runs foul of a shadowy underworld organisation and finds himself hunted both by his fellow criminals and by the police. 

He eventually abandons the life of crime but as we will see in The False Faces it is not so easy for a man to escape his past.

Given that it was written during the First World War it is not altogether surprising that The False Faces is a spy thriller rather than a crime thriller. Lanyard is now working, on a semi-official basis, for the British intelligence services (his criminal career being overlooked in view of the potential usefulness of the skills acquired in the course of that career). He has been gathering intelligence behind the German lines but now he has a new task, a task that requires him to take passage on the steamer Assyrian en route for New York. It is 1917 and the United States is still neutral but a declaration of war seems likely at any time.

It soon becomes apparent that German agents are also aboard the Assyrian. Lanyard is given a document by a young Englishwoman named Cecilia Brooke. This occurs in slightly puzzling circumstances. A man has been murdered, another is critically injured. Lanyard is inclined to trust Miss Brooke but he cannot be entirely sure of her. On the other hand he has sworn to hold on to the document for her, and one cannot betray a promise to a lady.

The body count on board the Assyrian starts to rise alarmingly. There may well be a whole battalion of German spies aboard. Worse is to follow - an encounter with a U-boat. The pace of the story starts to accelerate as Lanyard undergoes a bizarre series of adventures. He is increasingly convinced that he is being dogged by a figure from his past and this sinister figure may now be a top German secret agent. 

The action (and there is no shortage of it) takes place on the high seas, under the sea, in a remote cove on the American coast and in the night clubs of New York. Lanyard is facing a deadly enemy who will stop at nothing but our hero is equally implacable since he has a personal score to settle.

Vance was a writer who clearly believed the wartime propaganda that not only the whole of England but the whole of the United States as well was infested by thousands of German spies. The level of hysteria is extraordinary, even by the standards of wartime spy thrillers. There are traitors everywhere. No-one can be trusted! In New York alone there seem to be hundreds of German spies.

Every German character is the book is totally and irredeemably beastly. They are all brutal vicious murderers. German soldiers bayonet babies. Literally. The extent of the fear and hatred of Germans expressed in this novel is astounding. You expect jingoism in a wartime spy thriller but Vance goes breathtakingly over-the-top. The Kaiser doesn’t actually appear in the book but he does get a few mentions. He was apparently the most blood-soaked butcher in history. 

Not only are all the Germans in the novel evil. They are also, without exception, stupid and insane. Really insane, as in barking mad insane. This is a bit odd because on the one hand we’re expected to believe that the Germans have a vast and ruthlessly efficient system of espionage and sabotage that is a mortal threat to the survival of every country on the planet, but on other other hand we’re also expected to believe that all Germans are so crazy and so stupid that they could not possibly be a threat to anyone. 

There’s also a romance sub-plot, as Lanyard falls for the charms of the courageous and beautiful Miss Brooke.

Jingoism aside this is a rousing tale of adventure, packed with action and excitement, and told with energy and panache. At times the reader’s credibility may be stretched a little - at least one of the Lone Wolf’s narrow escapes from certain death pushed the bounds of luck and coincidence very far indeed. That really doesn’t matter; if anything it adds to the book’s appeal.

While the Lone Wolf is the kind of hero who became very popular in the interwar years the style of the book is more reminiscent of the pre-First World War era. The combination of a slightly Edwardian sensibility with the dash and frenetic nervous energy of the thrillers of the 20s and 30s actually works quite well. Michael Lanyard is an indefatigable and brave, and very resourceful, hero. His old-fashioned manners are rather charming, and rather amusing given that he is a thief by profession.

The early Lone Wolf books are representative of a fascinating and important stage in the development of the classic thriller novel. They don’t compare with the works of a master like John Buchan but they’re still very worthwhile.

The False Faces provides plenty of entertainment. Recommended.

S. S. Van Dine’s The Kennel Murder Case

The Kennel Murder Case was the sixth of S. S. Van Dine’s twelve Philo Vance mystery novels. It appeared in 1933. Opinions have always been divided on the merits of the Philo Vance detective novels. Personally I am very much a Philo Vance fan.

Van Dine was very much a devotee of the complex puzzle plot and The Kennel Murder Case certainly has some extraordinarily baroque plot twists.

The book opens with a collector of Chinese ceramics found dead in his bedroom with the door locked from the inside. Superficially it appears to be suicide but Vance blows that theory out of the water very quickly (and very neatly). It is clearly murder. At this point the reader may well be expecting this to be a classic locked-room mystery. This is an entirely erroneous assumption. There is indeed a locked-room mystery here but it is merely one element in a much more complex plot. In fact the mystery of the locked room is the least puzzling aspect of the case and one which Vance disposes of almost as an afterthought.

The biggest puzzle is that the body was found in the bedroom when clearly it should have been found in the library. All the evidence points to the murder having been committed in the library and there is simply no way the body could have ended up in the bedroom. The snag is that the bedroom was where the body was in fact found.

This is in fact much more of an impossible crime story than a locked-room mystery and it’s a very clever variation on the impossible crime idea.

Almost as puzzling as the whereabouts of the body is the discovery of a badly injured Scotch Terrier in the house. The presence of a dog in a household comprised entirely of people who dislike dogs is certainly odd, and even odder is the fact that someone apparently attempted to murder the wee beastie. No-one can see how the presence of the dog could possibly be significant. No-one, that is, apart from Vance. He is convinced the dog is a vital clue, and fortunately he happens to know a very great deal about Scotch Terriers. He knows almost as much about this breed of dog as he knows about Chinese ceramics, and his knowledge on that subject is positively encyclopaedic.

I am always delighted by golden age detective stories that include floor plans so you can imagine my joy when I discovered that this novels includes two floor plans, a map and a diagram of an ingenious criminal device!

Whether you enjoy the Philo Vance books depends to an extremely large extent on how you respond to Vance himself. He is either, depending on your tastes, exasperatingly pompous and affected or delightfully erudite and witty. I think he’s a wonderful character but this is a case where your mileage may vary very considerably.

Van Dine’s books sold in immense quantity during the late 20s and early 30s but by the time of his death in 1939 his popularity was starting to decline and after his death he fell from critical favour in a spectacular fashion (although critic Julian Symons in his 1972 study of the genre Bloody Murder had very high praise for the first six Vance mysteries). Van Dine’s eclipse has never been satisfactorily explained. It may have been a change in public tastes or it may simply have been due to his early death. Of course it might also have something to do with the fact that for some reason critics who disapproved of puzzle-plot mysteries seemed to take a particularly violent dislike to Van Dine’s books and to his detective hero (with Symons being an honourable exception to this rule).

The Kennel Murder Case does incorporate a certain plot device that might disturb readers who like detective stories to adhere very strictly to the rules (the rules as laid down by Van Dine himself). This element does not disqualify the novel as a fair-play mystery but it might be seen as sailing a little close to the wind. 

The Kennel Murder Case is typical of Van Dine in his prime - it features a truly byzantine plot with some characteristically outrageous twists and it gives Vance the opportunity to demonstrate his knowledge of everything from Chinese ceramics to small dogs. It’s all great fun. Highly recommended.

The Weapon Shops of Isher

A. E. van Vogt’s The Weapon Shops of Isher is one odd little science fiction novel. Part of its oddity undoubtedly stems from the fact that the author created the novel by combining three previously published short stories, a common practice in 1951 (when the novel was published in book form) and one to which van Vogt was particularly addicted. This has the result of making The Weapon Shops of Isher even more incoherent than it would have been anyway. In this case the incoherence doesn’t really matter. It’s no coincidence that Philip K. Dick was a huge fan of van Vogt’s work - it’s intentionally mind-bending and it throws a lot of ideas at the reader. Fortunately many of the ideas are rather good.

This novel is set on Earth, thousands of years into the future. This is the age of the Isher Empire. The current empress would like to rule with an iron hand but she cannot, because of the power of the weapon shops. The weapon shops are a kind of shadow government, but not quite. Whether they have any legal status is uncertain. Either way they exist and they are immensely powerful.

The empress has decided to break the power of the weapon shops, using a new energy weapon. The weapon shops however are far from defenceless. In this case their defence involves a manipulation of space and time that has the effect of hurling an unlucky mid-20th century newspaper reporter seven thousand years into the future - and that’s just the beginning of his misfortunes. The weapon shops also make use of Cayle Clark, a young man with some unusual abilities (including breath-taking luck at gambling).

The man behind the strategy of the weapon shops is Robert Hedrock, who happens to be immortal (among other useful attributes).

The plot will set your head spinning at times. This is an author who doesn’t worry too much  about plausible future technologies. He just seems to enjoy tossing cool ideas around.

The most interesting, and the most controversial, aspects of the book are its political content and what appears to be a very strong pro-gun message. My advice is that whatever your views on the subject of guns don’t be put off by this - guns are not really the point of the story, they’re more a mechanism for driving an important element of the plot. Also don’t jump to the conclusion that this is a stereotypical right-wing fantasy - the politics of the novel are much more complex than that and can’t really be placed neatly on a left-right axis.

The Isher Empire is a monarchy with pretensions toward absolutism but in practice it’s nowhere near absolutist and certainly not totalitarian. The government is meddlesome and bureaucratic and would undoubtedly have become totalitarian but for a number of limiting factors. The first of these is the existence of the weapon shops. The weapon shops will sell people guns but the guns can only be used for self-defence. If you try to use them for any other purpose they simply won’t function. They are in effect intelligent guns. It should be noted though that the weapon shops define self-defence rather broadly. Their guns can be used not just to defend a person against a physical threat but also against a severe infringement of his rights. Weapon shop guns are also vastly more effective than the government’s guns. This has the effect of making outright tyranny or totalitarianism impossible since individuals can not only protect themselves against such threats; they can do so with a near certainty of success.

The government’s powers are also limited by the uncertain loyalty of the army and by corruption. The Isher government is very corrupt but in some ways this is a feature rather than a bug. Without the corruption the government would be much more efficient, and hence much more dangerous. This is a world in which real power is divided. Not officially and not willingly, but in practice no one group can gain a monopoly of power.

The empress is capricious, overbearing, arrogant and impetuous. She is also realistic, conscientious, courageous and generally well-meaning. A monarch has to take a long-term view. If a monarch makes a mess of things there may be no kingdom for the heirs to inherit. The empress therefore has to regard the empire as in some ways held in trust by her. That tends to encourage moderation and wisdom. The empire represents stability and while the weapon shops are watchful they are not actually opposed to the government. They simply oppose any extension of its power.

Apart from the politics the book also has some pretty cool ideas on time travel and time travel paradoxes. It’s also intriguing in that (like Larry Niven’s much later Ringworld) it treats luck as something real, something than can even be quantified. Cayle Clark’s success at gambling is no accident - given his abilities it is inevitable.

This novel is a product of a period in the history of the genre when an author could write an incredibly ambitious novel packed with ideas that is also very very short. Having started  in the pulps van Vogt knew how to tell a story with admirable conciseness. There’s more emphasis on characterisation than you might expect. Both the empress and Cayle Clark are much more complex than the average protagonists of 1950s science fiction. The empress in particular is a rather fascinating personality and is far from being either a stereotypical heroine or villainess.

The Weapon Shops of Isher is a bit disjointed and it has its flaws. Robert Hedrock is a rather tedious infallible superman figure. Despite all this it’s an odd but exceptionally stimulating example of the science fiction of the golden age. Highly recommended.

S. S. Van Dine’s The Dragon Murder Case

The Dragon Murder Case, published in 1933, was the seventh of S. S. Van Dine’s twelve Philo Vance mysteries. I think it’s one of his best but that’s not a view that has been shared by some important critics of the detective story.

In his very influential study of the detective story, Bloody Murder, Julian Symons takes a surprisingly positive view of the first six Philo Vance books but is contemptuously dismissive of the last six. That dismissal has been widely echoed but in the case of The Dragon Murder Case it seems a little unfair.

The Dragon Murder Case has most of the features you expect in a Philo Vance novel. The plot is intricate, the murder method is bizarre and spectacular and Philo Vance is in very Philo Vance form. The latter is either a very good thing or a very bad thing depending on how you feel about Vance, and that is very much a matter of personal preference. I can understand those who find Vance irritating and who dislike Van Dine’s style although personally I find both to be highly entertaining. I like footnotes. I can’t help it.

In an earlier Vance book Van Dine had already dealt with criticisms of Vance’s English accent by pointing out that he had been educated in England. Anyone who spent their formative years in England (and given Vance’s social position this would have meant one of the great public schools followed by either Oxford or Cambridge) would naturally have picked up some upper-class English mannerisms and some trace of an accent. Philo Vance was the sort of hero that Van Dine wanted and the success he enjoyed suggests that most readers were happy with such a hero.

The setting for The Dragon Murder Case is the vast Stamm estate in New York City. Rudolph Stamm and his sister are the last of their line and Rudolph is a character right out of gothic fiction. He could be the protagonist of one of Poe’s stories. In fact there’s quite a marked Poe influence in this tale. 

Homicide cop Sergeant Heath has been called to the Stamm estate after a guest had decided on a swim, dived into the Dragon Pool and never emerged. It seems like a straightforward accident but there is something about the atmosphere in the Stamm mansion that Sergeant Heath is very unhappy about. He feels that this is a case that District Attorney Markham should take a look at. In fact he’s probably even more anxious for Markham’s friend Philo Vance to take a look. Having worked with him on previous baffling cases Sergeant Heath has developed a great respect for Vance’s crime-solving abilities. Markham is rather annoyed at being called out to investigate what seems to him to be clearly an accident but Vance is inclined to think that Heath’s instincts may be right. When the Dragon Pool is drained it becomes obvious that this is no accident.

It should be explained that the Dragon Pool is not a swimming pool but an artificial pond of considerable extent, and considerable depth.

This is in some ways a classic example of an impossible crime story. Adding extra spice (and even more gothic atmosphere) are the old Indian legends attached to the Dragon Pool, legends of an actual dragon.

The Dragon Murder Case is a fine example of the fair-play mystery. Van Dine is scrupulous about giving us the necessary clues to both the murder method and the identity of the murderer. R. Austin Freeman said that clues should never be hidden. They should be left in plain sight, and the writer should rely on the reader’s endless capacity to miss their significance. This is what Van Dine does. The really important clues are all right out in the open. Freeman also felt that the writer should never cheat by laying false clues. Van Done does make one use of a false clue in this book, but it’s done in such a way that the alert reader should be suspicious of it from the start.

My own view is that the writer also needs to play fair psychologically - the reader needs to believe that the killer is not only the only one who could have physically committed the crime, but also the only one with the right psychology to have committed it. That means more than just a convincing motive; the killer needs to be the sort of person who would commit murder, and do so in the manner in which the murder was actually carried out. Van Dine is careful to do that in The Dragon Murder Case. The solution might be wildly outlandish but it still rings true psychologically.

One of the conventions of the golden age detective story is that there should be a limited number of suspects. A popular way of doing his was to put the suspects in a location that is physically isolated from the outside world, thus eliminating the possibility of an outside killer. In this book Van Dine handles the situation more cleverly and more subtly. The estate is not cut off from the outside world but the crime happens in such a way that only the small group of people staying at the house could have had the one essential piece of information that made the crime possible. The killing is also done in such a manner that the killer must have been very familiar with the geography of the estate. An outsider could certainly have entered the estate, but an outsider could not have done this murder.

What this means is that the extraordinary setting Van Dine has chosen is not just there to provide a colourful backdrop. It plays a crucial plot rôle. It would not be going too far to say that this is a murder that could have taken place nowhere else in New York. 

The Dragon Murder Case is outlandish but wonderfully entertaining. Van Dine’s style might strike some critics as overblown but it’s perfectly in keeping with the nature of the story and its setting. Tremendous fun, and highly recommended.

The Canary Murder Case

The Canary Murder Case was the second of S. S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance mysteries. It appeared in 1927 and was a huge bestseller, putting its author at the top of the tree as far as American crime writers were concerned.

The Canary is Broadway musical comedy star Margaret Odell. As successful as she was on the stage she was even more successful as a blackmailer. I say was, because the book opens with Odell’s murder.

A celebrity murder is bad enough but this case brings with it even more headaches for District Attorney Markham. It all hinges on the unusual layout of Odell’s apartment building.  The murderer could only have entered by the front entrance, and in doing so would certainly have been seen by the telephone operator on duty in an alcove off the main hallway. There are several suspects who might well have had, and in fact almost did have, very strong motives for murdering the Canary. But the layout of the building and the evidence of the telephone operator both conspire to make it absolutely impossible for any of the suspects to have been in Odell’s apartment at the time of her murder.

The impossibility of the crime is dismaying to the DA but it does not bother his friend, the celebrated amateur detective Philo Vance. As he explains to Markham, lawyers rely far too much on facts.

While the initial emphasis of the plot is on the seemingly impossible nature of the crime the alibis of the suspects will become increasingly important. Philo Vance however is more interested in the psychology of the killer. The nature of the crime and the way in which it was carried out are enough to tell him precisely the sort of person who must have committed it, and they tell him the sorts of people who could not possibly have done so. Vance does not rely on intuition, or at least he would strenuously deny such an allegation. To Vance the psychology of murder is an exact science.

This is the type of detective technique that is fairly difficult to bring off with complete success but Van Dine manages it very successfully in this intricately-plotted book. Which is not to say that alibis and other such items so beloved of lawyers are ignored. This is a book with a kind of double solution - Vance’s psychological insights might be able to tell him who killed the Canary but there’s still the annoying difficulty of those apparently unbreakable alibis, and juries do tend to make rather a fuss about unbreakable alibis. As Vance would say, it’s most distressin’.

Philo Vance is perhaps the most divisive of all the great fictional detectives. Readers who dislike him tend to do so with an extraordinary and ferocious intensity, mocking his pretensions to aristocratic breeding, erudition and high culture. His fans are equally passionate in his defence, and love everything about him that the Vance-haters dislike. I personally find him to be highly amusing and thoroughly engaging but I can see how others would respond differently. Van Dine’s writing style is perfectly in tune with his hero so that if you’re a Philophile it increases your enjoyment even further while if you’re a Philophobe it will merely increase your irritation.

If you fall into the pro-Vance camp then this book is of course essential reading being generally regarded as Van Dine very close to the top of his form, an opinion with which I wholeheartedly concur. If you’re yet to sample Van Dine’s crime fiction then this is an ideal starting point. Highly recommended.

S. S. Van Dine’s The Scarab Murder Case

The Scarab Murder Case, published in 1929, was the fifth of S. S. Van Dine’s twelve Philo Vance mysteries. This one has, as the title suggests, an Egyptology background to it. I’m a sucker for anything to do with Egyptology and since I’ve loved the other Philo Vance books I’ve read it was pretty near a dead set certainty that I’d love this one. Which I did.

The very wealthy Benjamin H. Kyle is found murdered with his skull crushed by a statue of the Egyptian goddess Sakhmet. Kyle owned two adjoining brownstones in East Twentieth Street in New York. One of the houses had been converted into a museum of Egyptian antiquities, under the directorship of Dr Mindrum W. C. Bliss. Kyle’s body was found in the museum. The other house, the one next door to the museum, is occupied by Dr Bliss, his half-Egyptian wife, an old family retainer of Mrs Bliss’s named Hani and Kyle’s nephew Salveter. The body was discovered by Donald Scarlett, an Englishman and an amateur Egyptologist who had acted as a technical adviser on most of Dr Bliss’s archaeological digs.

In true golden age detective style we have been introduced to all the possible suspects within the first few pages, and any one of the characters enumerated above could have had both motive and opportunity for killing Mr Kyle. The obvious evidence points to Dr Bliss and both the District Attorney John F.-X. Markham and Sergeant Heath of the Homicide Bureau (characters who appear in virtually all the Philo Vance novels) are inclined to make an early arrest, but Markham’s old friend and frequent colleague, the brilliant amateur detective Philo Vance, has a deep and abiding suspicion of obvious evidence. He persuades Markham and Heath to hold off.

It soon becomes obvious that the evidence is less clear-cut than first appeared and it will take all Philo Vance’s talents to unravel this mystery.

This is classic, almost textbook, golden age detective fiction. The plotting is ingenious and fiendishly convoluted. The characters are colourful enough but in this type of detective fiction characterisation takes a back seat to the working out of the puzzle at the heart of the book. And this one has an undeniably clever puzzle, leading on to a very clever and somewhat surprising conclusion (surprising not in terms of the identity of the murderer so much as the manner in which the said murderer is brought to justice).

Whether you actually enjoy the book or not depends almost entirely on how you feel about Philo Vance. If you find him insufferable, and many people do, you will this book a chore to get through. If, like me, you simply adore Philo Vance then you’ll find the book to be an absolute delight. If you haven’t read any of the Philo Vance mysteries I’d be inclined to recommend that you start with the first of them, The Benson Murder Case, and then work through them in chronological order.

Jules Verne's The Steam House

Jules Verne’s 1880 novel The Steam House is one of his lesser known works, but one not without interest.

In the 1860s an assortment of English and French travellers undertake an extraordinary journey through India by elephant. But this is no ordinary elephant. This is a steam elephant! And they travel in style, the steam elephant (affectionately christened Behemoth) pulling behind it two well-appointed and comfortable houses.

This idea had been put to an engineer named Banks that while travel was pleasant it was even more pleasant to remain in one’s home. Banks proposed a solution to this dilemma - he would contrive an invention that would allow a party of adventurous souls to make a lengthy journey without the necessity of ever leaving behind the comforts of home. His invention, Steam House, would be a luxurious wheeled house drawn by a powerful steam traction engine.

In fact not one house but two, it being naturally desirable to have a separate house to contain the provisions needed for such a journey along with the servants. Since all Englishmen are of course eccentric and whimsical he builds the traction engine in the form of a gigantic mechanical elephant.

This turns out to be more than a mere pleasure jaunt. One member of the party is Colonel Munro, whose wife was brutally slain at Cawnpore during the Indian Mutiny. Munro was able to take vengeance on some of the mutineers but the leading spirit behind the Mutiny, the redoubtable Nana Sahib, escaped. Colonel Munro and Nana Sahib remained sworn and implacable enemies. Rumours of both Nana Sahib’s death and his continued existence have swept the sub-continent but just before this story starts an apparently certain report of his death seemed to have closed this chapter of history. Colonel Munro however does not believe that his old enemy is truly dead.

That is why the colonel agreed to join the expedition - he hopes to find evidence of Nana Sahib’s whereabouts and finally bring him to justice.

 Captain Hood has other reasons to undertake this journey. A keen hunter, he hopes to being his tally of tigers to fifty. The other members of the party are motivated mostly by the sheer pleasure and interest of the journey that will take them to the foothills of the Himalayas.

As was his usual practice, Verne delights in making his account as detailed as possible. At times this slows the narrative down and the first half of the tale is a little on the slow side. It starts to gather steam, so to speak, by the halfway point when the party meets up with an eccentric Dutch animal zoologist collecting live animals for European zoos. And it really picks up when they find themselves on the trail of a deadlier prey than tigers - Nana Sahib himself!

The rights and wrongs of the Indian Mutiny and of the Raj have been endlessly debated and I have no intention of adding anything on that subject. Nor wilI I venture any opinion on subjects such as tiger-hunting. Verne is mostly concerned with telling a tale of adventure. It is a tale of its time but it is still an intriguing and on occasions exciting story.

For some obscure reason Wildside Press elected to publish this book in two volumes, the first being The Demon of Cawnpore, the second being Tigers and Traitors. It’s not a particularly long novel and there is no reason at all to break it into two halves. On the other hand they are to be commended for making such an obscure work available in English. The translator is not named but the translation maintains the feel of a 19th century novel, avoiding any annoying tendencies to intrude modern idioms or prejudices but still being enjoyable and highly readable.

If you’re a fan of Verne, or of 19th century stories of travel and adventure, there is sufficient entertainment here to make it worthwhile seeking out this forgotten book.