LAWRENCE G. BLOCHMAN “Dr. Coffee and the Pardell Case.” First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1972. Probably never collected or reprinted.

   Lawrence Blochman had a long illustrious career as a mystery writer, starting as an author of thrillers in the 1930s and 40s before converting to more traditional detective fiction after the war. His best known series character in the latter end of his career was Dr. Webster Coffee, chief pathologist at Pasteur Hospital in Northbank, Ohio. He was also the personal medical examiner for Lt. Max Ritter, of the local police department. They appeared together in one novel and two hardcover story collections, plus a few later stories such as this one that have never appeared in book form.

   I called this a locked room story, for indeed it is, for about a day in the story or less. When the victim calls Ritter in a panic, the latter rushes to the scene and finds the dead man shot to death in a locked room with no possible access to it. This particular aspect of the mystery is soon cleared up by Coffee’s colleague Dr. Mookerji, who determines that the dead man could have survived the shot long enough for him to enter the room and lock the door behind him before dying. Not a lot of mystery there!

   Neither Ritter nor Coffee are given much personality in this one. Two full pages are spent on showing what a miserable person the victim was, however, a man who pulled himself up from his bootstraps as a child to become a rich and powerful man – whom everyone hated. From a mystery reader’s point of view, this provides for a whole list of suspects, each one with a motive. It is the opportunity that each of them may have had that Ritter has to look into. Dr. Coffee, when it comes down to it, does not have a whole lot to do in this one.

   Good old-fashioned police work, that’s all that’s needed in this one.