Review: Golden Age of Locked Room Mysteries ed. Otto Penzler

Synopsis: For devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period’s purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. 

During the years between the two world wars, the best writers in the genre strove to outdo one another with unfathomable crime scenes and brilliant explanations, and the puzzling and clever tales they produced in those brief decades remain unmatched to this day.

Among the Americans, some of these authors are still household names, inextricably linked to the locked room mysteries they devised: John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, Stuart Palmer. Others, associated with different styles of crime fiction, also produced great works—authors including Fredric Brown, MacKinlay Kantor, Craig Rice, and Cornell Woolrich.

All of these and more can be found in Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, selected by Edgar Award-winning mystery expert and anthologist Otto Penzler. Featuring a delightful mix of well-known writers and unjustly-forgotten masters, the fourteen tales included herein highlight the best of the American impossible crime story, promising hours of entertainment for armchair sleuths young and old.

A nice anthology of classic "locked room" mysteries dates from predominantly the 1930s and 1940s. The settings vary from a touch of the science fiction - a la HG Wells - to the supernatural, missing heirs, actors, greedy and murderous relatives. Add to this a strange selection of detective: a magician, a young girl, an insurance broker, the usual police / detectives, a spinster, and a switchboard operator. Each story is unique - some are lengthy, others short and to the point.

A little summary to assist the reader:

Elsewhere by Anthony Boucher:

* published 1946

* sci-fi theme (use of a time machine)

Whistler's Murder by Frederic Brown:

* published 1946

* a vaudeville act holds the key

* insurance broker investigates

The Third Bullet by John Dickson Carr

* published 1937

* one murder victim, two sisters, three guns, three bullets

Fingerprint Ghost by Joseph Commings

* published 1947

* murder and a seance

* senator and magician investigates

Calico Dog by Mignon Eberhart

* published 1934

* return of a long lost child / heir

The Exact Opposite by Earl Stanley Gardner

* published 1941

* missing explorer and a gem in India

The Light at Three O'Clock by MacKinlay Kantor

* published 1930

* return of a murdered man

* switchboard operator investigates

The Episode of the Nail & the Requiem by C Daly King

* published 1935

* dead artists model and some late night music

The Riddle of the Yellow Canary by Stuart Palmer

* published 1934

* music producer and a dead starlet

* elderly spinster investigates

The House of Haunts  by Ellery Queen

* published 1951

* dead man's daughter returns

* creepy house and its occupants, gold, and an imposter

Off The Face of the Earth by Clayton Rawson

* published 1949

* missing judge, missing girls

* Great Merlini investigates

His Heart Could Break - Craig Rice

* published 1943

* suicide of a prisoner

* lawyer investigates - was it a frame up

Murder Among Magicians by Manley Wade Wellman

* published 1939

* when five guests visits a magician's home, murder prevails

Murder at the Automat by Cornell Woolrich

* published 1937

* man murdered in a restaurant

Nice retrospective look back at the golden age of locked room mysteries.