Tue 12 Jul 2011
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: KEN CROSSEN – The Case of the Phantom Figerprints.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
William F. Deeck
KEN CROSSEN – The Case of the Phantom Fingerprints. Vulcan Publications #5, digest-sized paperback original, 1945.
This is the second of two novels featuring the talents of Jason Jones, a very unusual detective first grade who is a fat, lazy, geranium-raising sleuth — the “poor man’s Nero Wolfe” — and the presence of, for he doesn’t seem to have any talent, Necessary Smith, private detective.
In this case, a straightforward murder is committed. Morris Block, Broadway producer and blackmailer, is stabbed to death at his home during a party. The murderer’s fingerprints are on the knife. When the police finish fingerprinting the group and discover a match, the killer vanishes from the house, despite all the doors being guarded by the police and the few unlocked windows having the snow on their sills undisturbed.
This is a fair-to-middling “impossible situation” novel. Those who have read Carter Dickson’s Nine–And Death Makes Ten will know how the murderer manages to disappear. One of the clues is a mystery novel, The Laughing Buddha Murders, another impossible-situation novel, by Richard Foster, one of Crossen’s pseudonyms, and published also by Vulcan.
Bibliographic Notes: The other, earlier case tackled by the detective duo of Jason Jones and Necessary Smith was The Case of the Curious Heel (Eerie Series, paperback, 1944).
If I am reading Bill correctly here, one of the clues in solving this mystery was another book by the same author but under a pen name. This can’t have happened often. (It is as if Sir Henry Merrivale referenced Gideon Fell in one of his locked room adventures.) Can anyone come up with another such instance?
July 13th, 2011 at 2:16 am
The only instance I can think of at the moment is R.E. Swartwout’s THE BOAT RACE MURDER, coincidently also a locked room mystery, although a fairly minor one, in which THE RASP by Philip MacDonald functions as one of the major clues. But, let the reader be warned, spoilers are inevitable!
July 13th, 2011 at 11:00 am
TomCat
Thanks! That’s what I call fast!
When I asked the question I didn’t even know if anyone could come up with anything even close to what I was looking for. The Swartwout book is a new one on me — it was his only mystery, as I’ve found out — and it sounds as though I ought to have a copy. As for THE RASP, I have read it, and I enjoyed it:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=251
July 13th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Edward D. Hoch wrote a short story, in which Philip MacDonald’s RYNOX forms a clue.
Can’t remember the name of the tale.
Stuart Palmer characters often talk about Sherlock Holmes.
July 13th, 2011 at 8:42 pm
Mike
Duh! That hadn’t occurred to me, but I suspect that the Holmes canon comes up fairly often in other authors’ books. Every once in a while, at least!
Interesting that your Hoch reference was another MacDonald tale.
— Steve
July 15th, 2011 at 5:48 am
Here’s another one: “The Mystery of the Green Room” by Piere Very. It’s a short story that pays tribute to Gaston Leroux’s THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM, and the solution of that book functions as the tell-tale clue in this story. You can find it in the latest issue of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
July 15th, 2011 at 10:04 am
An example to the query in the current issue? Now that’s what I call nice. Obviously I have to pay more attention to EQMM.