STUART TOWNE [CLAYTON RAWSON] – Death Out of Thin Air.

Coward McCann, hardcover, 1941. UK edition: Cassell & Co., hardcover, 1947. Both novelettes are included in The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo, by Clayton Rawson, aka Stuart Towne, Battered Silicon Dispatch Box Press, hc, 2005.

   Death out of Thin Air is, I believe, a scarce book. It actually contains two pulp novelettes, “Death from the Past” and “Death from the Unseen,” featuring Don Diavolo, a red-garbed version of the Great Merlini.

   Considering the stories’ source, it is not amazing that Diavolo’s entourage includes such elements as an oriental valet, a custom red automobile, beautiful blond twin assistants, and a townhouse next to his residence owned solely for the purpose of spying on and escaping from visitors.

   The first of the stories begins with a locked-room murder in Diavolo’s dressing room; the second gives us a variety of crimes carried out in such a way that the criminal must have been invisible. Similar crimes and further adventures and mysteries intervene before Diavolo exposes the perpetrators.

   These are not the best of Rawson’s works but contain full measure of the puzzlements fairly explained, though arising from unlikely and extravagant causes, which make all of his books so popular with a small group. What element is lacking in his books to account for their original small sales — it is hard to find a copy of any that was bought by an individual, not a library — and Rawson’s giving up writing them?

      Contents:

   Death from the Past, published as “Ghost of the Undead,” Red Star Mystery, June 1940.

   Death from the Unseen, published as “Death Out of Thin Air,” Red Star Mystery, August 1940.