STEPHEN LEATHER “Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish.” Novelette. Inspector Zhang #1. First published in 2011, perhaps in ebook format. Collected in The Eight Curious Cases of Inspector Zhang (Monsoon Books, softcover, 2014).

   The problem with most (almost all) locked room short fiction is that the stories are to short to include any personal information about the characters. It is the facts of the case that are important, nothing more and nothing less. This is one of latter, but did I mind? Not at all.

   Inspector Zhang’s purview is Singapore, and such is the state of security there that there are practically no murders in the city, much less those of the “locked room” variety. Inspector Zhang’s long time ambition is to have one to solve. Which he does, most handily, quoting often from John Dickson Carr’s work in general and the novel The Hollow Man (1935) in particular.

   Dead in his hotel room, the door of which was watched at all of times by a security TV camera in the outside hallway, is a wealthy American tourist, killed by what appears to have been a knife, but which is not found in the room.

   The solution is a simple one, relatively speaking, but it will still take a careful reader to catch the crucial clue. A fact that does not include me, I am embarrassed to tell you, but truth, as the old saying goes, will always out.

   Nicely done.