Clayton Rawson (1906–1971)

A locked-room mystery always carries some element of the magical or even the supernatural, at least at first, as the police and the detectives on scene try to explain the seemingly unexplainable. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that former stage magician The Great Merlini would be able to help Inspector Gavigan of the NYPD solve the murders of two noted occultists, with his friend Ross Harte playing the Watson/Boswell to his Holmes/Johnson. The cast of characters is similarly magical, with mediums, escape artists, magicians, and telepaths among the list of suspects.

This story was OK. Merlini was an amusing fellow, smart but not too obnoxious about it. And his magic shop includes a pet rabbit, perhaps not very creatively named Peter, but who was still extremely adorable. (This was probably my favourite part of the book, to be honest—Merlini, Harte, and Gavigan discussing the crime at Merlini’s shop while Merlini fed Peter carrots and cuddled him.)

I liked that John Dickson Carr and Dr. Fell were established as real people in-universe, with particular reference to Dr. Fell’s “locked room lecture” in The Three Coffins. The explanation of the solution made sense to me, eventually. I do sometimes find locked-room mysteries annoying because they are not easy to figure out on one’s own and when there are a lot of characters, as in this story, it’s hard to keep track of everyone and come up with a plausible theory. By the end of the book I was kind of worn down and just wanted it to be all tied up and solved, hence my 2.5-star rating. Almost liked it, but not quite.

Other readers with more patience for a locked-room mystery may get more out of this.… (more)

When an occultist is murdered in an impossible locked room mystery, a magician is called in to consult on the case. I was interested in how the murder was done, but I found the writing to be pretty sloppy. For example, Rawson has his Merlini character enumerate theories or possibilities several times and in one case dispenses with any approximation of dialogue and just writes numbers on the page with the corresponding item. And Merlini could get pretty tedious even when Rawson gave a nod towards actual dialogue.

Between Merlini and the POV character Harte's meta-ness, I don't think I'll be reading any more of these mysteries.… (more)