The first novel by Charlotte Armstrong

Charlotte Armstrong : Un cadavere al giorno(Lay On, Mac Duff!, 1942) – translation: Simonetta Cattozzo - I Classici del Giallo N. 1308, Mondadori, 2012, October

Charlotte Armstrong, born in Vulcan, Michigan, he was thirty-seven years old when she published her first crime novel, Lay on, Mac Duff!, 1942, who began the cycle of the same name. However, it ended in 1945, after only three novels. Was enough, however, to open the doors of success, and to make her appreciate how one of the writers finer and even more ingenious of the panorama detective U.S..
In fact, Lay on, Mac Duff!, followed by The Case of the Weird Sisters, 1943 and The Innocent Flower,1945, consecrated her definitely as a writer of the first magnitude.
Lay on, Mac Duff!, 1942, is an excellent novel, which I would define as experimentation was well received by the public, without being exceptional. In fact, there are already several ideas that Charlotte Armstrong inserted in later novels.
A poor orphan, Bessie Gibbon, is welcomed in the home of a rich uncle, Charles Cathcart, who is also known as a bird of prey of high finance, and which has three partners, with which he often plays. When Bessie is introduced in his house, she find  his uncle who plays "Royal Table" along with Guy Maxon, Bertram Gaskell and Hudson Winberry. There is also secretary of Winberry, Hugh Miller. In the room, the air is not kind: Bessie clearly perceives an aura of evil, hatred repressed.
That deepens, when his uncle lost (an anomaly, since always wins) and won the shareholders: for anger, Uncle Charles throws, unseen, three red men, some of the pieces with which he plays this game, the window . Bessie observes it. That very night, when the guests are all gone, Winberry is killed in his house with a gun, and the corpse is found at one of the three red checkers, similar to those that Charles had thrown out the window.

The police immediately directs the crime matured in its environment. Only three people, so they could commit and take advantage of: the three partners. The clues would become four if you add the three the only other man present that evening at home Cathcart: Hugh Miller, assistant Winberry. Hugh Miller just before the crime is consumed said he lost his apartment key to Winberry: will be found somewhere else later.
But soon the investigation looming difficult. All have their say, and it is not possible at the moment scratching the alibi: All three, in fact all four, could have committed the murder. But why Miller would kill his own employer? There would have received nothing. The others may get something.
The problem is that the victim is said to have exclaimed that he had never seen before his murderer: it was rescued when he was still alive. What does this mean? If true at all, he could not be one of the other three, even four, the murderer, because the victim would not have whispered, more to the point of death, not to recognize it.
The more we go forward with the investigation, the more you know other details: the home, which has helped the owner, said that there were two entrances into the house, one after the other, and after a while he heard, for the second time, the door open, he heard the shot. Old as the servant, when he rescued the master, the murderer was already far away.
However, what really you can not understand is because the victim has not removed his coat, if it was there first. This coat is one of the peculiar characteristics of this novel: it can be said that Armstrong plays with sensations. I will say further, the appearance of the amateur Mac Duff, a former professor of History, the sensations, perceptions, moods are often the most interesting clues. Here the feelings are those inherent in the heat and cold. Return several times in the course of the novel. On that occasion, this insistence on the opposition between hot and cold is evident twice, not only in reasoning on the coat (and there will be another even more important at the end of the novel, on the other the head of another person, from which emerge undoubtedly the guilt of the murderer), but also on what you appointment on the glasses. Yeah, because someone (Mac Duff, after being hired by Bessie and her boyfriend, journalist Jones) reflecting on the famous coat, suggests that the host may not have been the first to arrive, but the second fact, the what could be related to the fact that he had his glasses, and that, as everyone knows, when you switch from a colder to a warmer, glasses fog up. But why he had never seen? Bessie at this point reveals something that MacDuff did not know: during the famous game, Winberry, a bad person as sin, he exclaimed several times the word "never", but not giving it his absolute meaning. It means that in our case, could mean, that he "could not see him." What is in accord with the hypothesis of glasses fogged.

So the murderer was the first to come in, waited for the landlord and when they appeared on the threshold of the room, he immediately fired: the other because of the glasses fogged did not see it. It puts everything into question: would anyone, guest house Cathcart, killing him. Because, despite this, and the subsequent murder of Gaskell, occur in the homes of the victims, everything is built into the atmosphere of home Cathcart. Ultimately, everything that happens in this house has repercussions elsewhere.
Then there is the second murder: Gaskell was stabbed. Here, too, all of them are responsible, only that the number decreases. We shall see what significance it may have, stylistically speaking, this event.
Main suspect is just Cathcart, on the basis of the testimony of Hugh Miller, who says he tried to warn him by phone late at night, in the assassination of Winberry, and have not found it in the room (twice, at a distance of ten minutes apart). Based on this, and the fact that Bessie then see him that night, on the stairs, with shoes, not slippers, to show that it was resting, and Bessie Miller, on the night of the assassination of Gaskell, put the cords at the gates of the palace, so we know if indeed the master of the house comes out of stealth or not. Furthermore, when they do, Bessie realizes that one of the three coats disappeared from coat hook. Reappear, and a cord will fall. The reappearance of this coat, and the new hot-cold contrast, it will bind the final deduction that will nail the murderer to his/her responsibilities.
However, this second crime, not only in this case we have a new thermal contrast: in fact, it is mainly the problem of the clock thermostat of the heating system of the house to keep the counter. It 'was found broken, the glass and the hands broken, crooked, so you can not know with certainty whether the displayed time actually is that of death, related to the breaking of the watch, or if the murderess has deliberately moved manually hands to believe that the crime was committed at two a.m. in the morning and instead took place at midnight, at which time the motives of the suspects are no longer unassailable. As you can see, however, a new duel cold-hot.

This continual opposition between two opposing thermal stages however, is not just a story of feelings and perceptions, it is mainly the key that will lead to the final solution.
However, before this happens, there will be a third murder. And then there will be a duel-comparison between the only two possible be suspected. But at that moment will be a third wheel road: Herbert Graves.
In this mysterious third character is tied to a particular of which we have spoken at the time of the murder of each of the three members of Cathcart, close to the victim, was found a red man. And three red men were thrown out the window, to anger, to Charles after the loss of the game. These red men, we learn later, are strangely very similar to the candy Peppinger, now withdrawn from the market because they contained traces of drugs: their formula was invented by the Herbert Graves, who had sold it to Guy Maxon, Bertram Gaskell, Hudson Winberry and Charles Cathcart, who had to turn on the market with the characteristic shape of a little man.
After being paid, however Herbert Graves, in retrospect, having a sick wife and he felt that he was being paid too little in comparison with the fortune that the four had accumulated, had tried to get something else that he would need to pay the care of his wife, but she got nothing. And all the while his wife was dead. Of the four that had better luck later was Cathcart, the only one who had promised to give him some help, only had he provided too late, so the anger of Graves had been seeking above all to her. As you can see, an excellent motive to kill: the revenge.
And Lina what part had? Tried in turn to take Mac Duff to save her husband from a desperate situation: she is really foreign to crimes or she helped him? Or took the investigator to remove from himself the suspicion that he wanted to conspire against her husband, who has won only with the promise that he would not send to jail the father of Lina?
The conclusion will be surprising, because the final test, the challenged will supply Bessie. It will once again be based on the contrast between warm and cold.

What do we see in this first work by Charlotte Armstrong?
The first, we have two figures of investigation: Bessie, who, despite being initially despised or at least little regarded by the inhabitants and visitors of Casa Cathcart, has an important place in the affair; MacDuff that the allegations in the final frantic processes and leads to the definition of logical reasoning allows you to trap the murderer. However, who provides him with the keys to understand the situation is Bessie. Therefore, together with MacDuff, she forms the ideal couple Holmes-Watson of the story.
The two figures are reference points in a novel that is not of pure suspense (characteristic of Armstrong), but in which there are moments of great tension, which takes advantage of the reading, which goes smoothly and without a hitch, like a train fast. However, this first novel is basically a novel of character, a classic mystery.
We have said that in this novel, the emotions have their own importance. Mac Duff says: ".. Man's actions depend on his emotions .. The murder of Winberry rooted in the emotions of someone .."
What does it mean in the novels of Armstrong, perceptions and feelings are more important clues? Charlotte Armstrong, starting from 1942, there is much akin to the English classical detection by the evidence as a means of absolute survey (Doyle and Freeman especially), but rather to the American of the past decade: in other words, it inherits the vandinian detection. As repeatedly stated Philo Vance in his works, the evidence would be nothing if not follow the psychology of the characters: if this does not appear, you might not understand the intellectual game, the puzzle as a means to affirm the mind, deductive reasoning, who had triumphed in the period immediately preceding the entrance of Charlotte Armstrong. Moreover, the investigation of Sherlock Holmes is opposite to that of Philo Vance, as a concept, because while the first is expressly based on purely scientific methodology, the second re-evaluates the expression of humanistic inquiry, which is based on examination of the human soul, feelings. So, Charlotte Armstrong inherits Van Dine. Yes But Rufus King, wise use to build the tension in the story. And even Agatha Christie, when you have the revelation that a character in the story, it really is not what it appears, but it is another person under a false name, who you thought it was, and that he had all the motive for kill

Now, what is the salient feature of the novel? It 's a mystery with a strong tension, a tension that in certain moments become spasmodic. At this point, add frame which is the voltage which serves Charlotte Armstrong, because it serves to frame the importance of his work, not only in the case of this novel, but also of others.
The suspense writers in her past is directly related to the atmosphere. The atmosphere, the set of those elements that impact on the minds of individuals (terror, fear, joy, emotion, etc. ..) is most often linked to descriptions of the environment: a dark night, the presence of the moon , noise, etc. .. This atmosphere, leads to a voltage descriptive, which is typical of the authors of the '20s (Connington in the head).
Then there is a voltage of psychological-descriptive that I think the Armstrong may have borrowed from Rufus King.
King - taking a step of my essay published on the blog Mondadori two years ago - "was very important to the description of the characters and the atmosphere, and concentrate its efforts in enclosed spaces”.. Sometimes, Rufus King works with the technique of hint: adding or removing a few details to the picture, in an absolutely brilliant manner , that picture is constantly changed and this creates an emotional tension.
Charlotte Armstrong to this kind of psychological-emotional approach to descriptive, adds something of his own, in terms of pure style, which leads to even more pronounced results: when the number of people involved in the plot, which can also be indicted (as in this case), is maximum, the emotional tension is minimal; as, instead, the number progressively thins, the voltage increases. This reaches the maximum when it comes to a climax, with the elimination of the innocent and identifying the guilty party. In other words, a max. number of stakeholders to a some event is inversely proportional to the voltage generated: max number of subjects = minimum voltage, minimum number of subjects = maximum voltage.

An atmosphere like that, artificially constructed on the basis of a process purely literary style, is enhanced here by a component of pure atmosphere: claustrophobia, together with another: evil. In practice, everything that happens, happens because something lingers in the house, a feeling of repressed hatred that feeds on itself: as long as the characters of the story, are locked up in various rooms of the house, the perceptions of hate Bessie (character alien to the house, which is on the outside, and is therefore more receptive to those who already live in that environment), perceives, are always very strong, when in fact the characters leave the room, that's the voltage drops . This decrease was most certainly down also highlighted by the comparison of the situations in which governs the repressed feelings of hatred expressed by the assassin, who attends that environment for some time, and the brightness and light of Lina Cathcart, young wife of Charles Cathcart, which dissipate the atmosphere of hatred.
The claustrophobia is a mode accentuates the voltage, which is not only found here. In fact, here it is in a sense proven, but its highest expression is in the staging of the three sisters (almost three Fates) a blind, a deaf, a truncated, which are locked in the old house in The Case of the Weird Sisters , the second novel cycle Mac Duff.
Normally, in the dark, at night, is connected a feeling of insecurity in the novels, and in reality, murder, robbery, rape are almost always in the evening, at night, in the dark, in places not frequented, not light, the light are connected instead of the states related to the safety and well. In the case of our novel, these two original states and visible, is also linked to the opposition of perceptions related to temperature, cold or warm. These meet the need of creating an additional, suggesting that some things happen when there is a temperature other when there is another. More precisely, since the first two murders happen at night, and the nights are cold, the bad syllogism is associated with the cold, because it takes place outside the house, where, instead, everything is under control, where there is the warmth of the hearth.
When heat reacts the bitter cold, here fogging and the first murder, when in the second case is changed the timer on the thermostat inside the house, it is because there was the second murder. The third will subtract this logical sequence, because the second will not premeditation but according to the occasion that needs to be taken on the fly, “carpe diem” that defies every law intended.
But Charlotte Armstrong finds in this novel, in contrast cold hot, the emotional root of the novel, because, I believe, is the source of perceptual sensation of cold-hot: cold not only because it is connected to the death of the night, but because as you get closer to death, becomes less hot, because death is cold. So where there is cold, regardless of whether it is day or night, you end up dying, if you are not properly repaired.
Bessie will be conclusive evidence of the identity of the murderer, and the exoneration of the innocent, right in the cold-warm contrast: the coat if it had been used at night, it would have been cold, but instead what she cherished was warm, ie had remained in the house, had not been brought out into the night. And even more consequently, it could not be that coat was used by the murderer.
Not surprisingly, will remember this particular prior to the murderess is recognized that, when associate the warmth of the coat and the warmth that she had tried clutching journalist Jones, feeling the warmth of his coat, when he repaired properly between the his arms.
In other words, it is as if Charlotte Armstrong had said that "only love can conquer hate."

Pietro De Palma

Fredric Brown : Death Has Many Doors

Fredric Brown, was born in Cincinnati, October 29, 1906. As a young man, he held various jobs, working in an amusement park (in fact one of his most famous novels, The Deep End, it is set in such a place), before finding a job as a proofreader, after he had entered the university without graduating. Published some short stories in pulp magazines and in 1947 he attempted the paper of the novel, writing The Fabulous Clipjoint: the novel, rejected by many publishers, it was eventually published by Dutton, winning the year after, the coveted Edgar Allan Poe Award for outstanding first mystery novel. Since then he began to also publish novels Fiction, as What Mad Universe or Martians, Go Home.
He died in 1972.
Brown was one of the greatest writers of Mystery and Science Fiction: his plots are full of inventions, and the finals are always of great workmanship.
In the field of mystery, Brown wrote several novels, some of which with the pair Ed Hunter and his uncle Ambrose, star of the hit novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint: for many years considered a minor novel in the bibliography of the author, it was only few years ago revalued, becoming one of the great crime novels of the twentieth century, and putting its author alongside other more celebrated as Jim Thompson, Dashiell Hammett, Ross MacDonald.

Fifth novel with Ed and Am Hunter, Death Has Many Doors (1951), is one of those novels that may well frame the multifaceted personality of Brown.
The novel tells of a pair of detectives, uncle and nephew, employed by a client at least strange, Sally Doerr, a shorthand typist, who, convinced of the existence of aliens, states that they, hidden in disguise human, they want to kill her. The two investigators make every effort to dissuade his commitment to making investigators, because, honest to the core, they think that the girl is a little unscrewed, and therefore does not intend to take advantage of her, nor would like to see other people as less scrupulous of them, I took advantage. However, if only to reassure the girl, Ed Hunter promises that he will watch over her, and, accompanying her at home, will stand near. Winning attraction rather than legitimate, since the girl is very beautiful, and she would to fuck with him (because she thinks  would be better protected so), and he wanted to be as professional as possible, Ed sits on the couch while her, completely naked, sits on the bed, the bedroom door ajar, so that at any time he can run. The fact is that Hunter falls asleep, waking up at two o'clock, when the phone ringing the alarm: he answers, but has no answer. However, still seeing the light on in her room, he goes to see, realizing that the girl, naked on the bed, inexplicably died. There are no marks on her body or injuries that may suggest a murder. However, the girl was found with his arm in a strange position as if she was taking a book, including those posed close to the bed.

Ed calls his friend, Homicide Bureau Captain Frank Bassett, with whom he has already worked a few times, and tells him about the events. The police visits, the corpse is taken away and autopsied, reveals that, in case there was still some suspicion that the girl died of a heart attack: she was suffering from heart and then, probably for the stress derived from its fears she wad dead.
Case closed. Or rather, no. Because he has some suspicion about it, or rather he wants to remove all possible stones, before they ended the matter, especially since she died while he was in the next room. And, because of this thing, he asks relatives. He can not find any possible motive that could justify the murder of the girl. She and her sister belong to a family of modest conditions: orphan son was bred by Gerard and Eve Stanton. Her uncle lives in the house, Ray Wernecke, which exceeds with alcohol and the stories of Martians: he communicated to the niece these absurd fears.
The fact that she was sleeping naked, poses no possible reason to investigate Ed, especially as he turns out, interviewing family members, as this was a habit of the girl. And the parents and relatives of the girl, recognize as Ed and his uncle behaved more honestly that against her. When it appears that you could put a lid on it, a mysterious phone call get the two investigators: the girl was murdered. The mysterious caller qualifies as a Martian eager to prove perfect strangeness of extraterrestrials in the affair. He makes sure that the two discover, in their study, their reward: a thousand-dollar banknote.

At this point the two on the basis of the pharaonic remuneration, they decide to take an excellent typist, Monica Wright, who will fill the post left vacant by Sally farm where she worked (and they will pay the difference in more about his paycheck ) to find out there, talking with her colleagues. And both Ed and his uncle, the first will discuss again with the Captain of Homicide Bureau, and then with a series of people, work and family entourage thereof. And in particular, Ed knows Sally's sister, Dorothy, a beautiful girl. Ed and Dorothy will fall in love. The strange thing that happens then is that this girl believes she can die like her sister, and who killed Sally could kill her too.
At this point, the two investigators, discuss with each other: Ed would not deal with the matter, but his uncle convinced him instead to deal with, not least to prevent another murder may be repeated, if absurd that the fears were well founded . Ambrose convinces his nephew to go with Dorothy, and spend the night with her in a secret and do not disclose to anyone where they are. Nevertheless, at night, while Dorothy and Ed, naked, are bathing in the lake, she dies.
There is no one beyond him, and that there was no one else around, attest the Auslander, a family living in a house on the lake. They were at the scene, they saved Ed, and they swore to the police as he was alien to the girl's death. However, do not tell, for decency and not to harm it, that he was naked, and when he found the girl, they bathe her clothes in the lake and wear her so that no one could imagine that Ed and Dorothy were both naked before.
Also this time, it may seem absurd to the matter, it would seem that the girl died of natural causes, an accident. And once again, the Stanton and Wernecke, destroyed by adverse situations, do not impute anything to Ed for girl's death.

However, Ed and Uncle investigate, and do not give up in front of the simpler explanations. And although the types that surround them seem harmless, among them discover the killer, who kills using sneaky scientific knowledge notch. And he will find out after even thought that he may be dropped from some balcony above and he was able to enter through the open window, but Ed then will reject this possibility after a complex series of conjectures, he will identify the weapon and the motive more oldest in the world: money. But, the two sisters were not poor?  And two adoptive parents didn’t pay the university to Dorothy ? The fact is that things are never as they seem. And it shows the final, ending, totally unexpected, in the wake of the many designed by Brown.
The novel is, among other things written in a style that captivates and much fascinating light and fluffy, the novel could be said to be a handled mystery. Nevertheless, it is written with great intelligence and is necessary for two impossible crimes. The beauty is that, unlike what normally happens, the inability of the two crimes is only assumed for the entire novel and confirmed only in the final pages, where it is explained in the light of the identification of the weapon (that would make the happiness of John Rhode) and the motive. Which in turn, as the two weapons used to kill the two girls brings back to the Cold War atmosphere that it was breathed in years when Fredric Brown delivered his audience his best work, and to secret weapons and to not secret weapons used at those years.

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Ellery Queen : The Egyptian Cross Mystery

Among all the novels of Ellery Queen, The Egyptian Cross Mystery is not a reading relaxing and free from strong scenes (as was the habit of english detection), but instead a deafening roar of death, blood and wickedness.
This mystery was the first that I've read: I found out to my aunt's house, on a shelf in the library. I was fifteen. Won me over immediately. I read and reread. A total of 4 times.
And every time that I've read has caused different sensations.  
The novel is one of the bloodiest of the entire production, with three brutal murders: the beheadings of three brothers. It certainly had to have a precise position in the queenian literary production, if it is true that you can associate ideally it with two other novels of the period of Queen (The Tragedy of X and The Siamese Twin Mystery) by virtue of a particular common: all three novels develop in a particular moment of their plot, the property has diabetes to cause rigor mortis earlier than normal.
The novel starts with the "crucifixion of a school teacher" Andrew Van, however, devoid of head, symbolizing a monstrous Egyptian Tau, on a pole indicator to a crossroads in the city of Arroyo: is Christmas morning.
Continues with the "crucifixion of a Millionaire": Brad Thomas, owner of Bradwood, "famous importer of carpets", beheaded, tied to a totem, the figure sadly recalling an Egyptian Tau.
And it ends with the death of Stephen Megara, to the mast of his boat, still without a head.
A story in which the blood flows freely: not only the blood of the three bodies outraged, but what sold away. In fact, it would seem that at some point the brutal murder of three men, three brothers, fled to America to disappear from the face of the earth, not to be reduced to nothing more than a tribal vendetta, a blood feud between two clans, the Krosac’s clan and the Tvar’s clan in Montenegro: in fact, it turns out in the end, is much more than that. And in a sense, the horror of the dramatic situation, is higher than that resulting from the completion of a vendetta distant geographically and temporally. Three men to escape and change his identity had chosen to claim a fictitious original nationality: Andrew Van, the Armenian; Brad Thomas, the Romanian; Stephen Megara, the Greek, changing theirs names at the original three respective cities: Van in Armenia, Brad in Romania, Megara in Greece.  

There were three brothers who wanted desperately to leave behind a sad past and look in America hopes immutable, new ideas of life: they will find a sad fate, pursued by a murderess who comes from afar. But, then, is all this really true?

And that monstrous “T”, formed by the arms outstretched linked or crucified, of a human body of missing head, suggest during the novel multiple interpretations: first, the Egyptian Tau, which will reconnect other suggestive theories. It must be said that the same Egyptian reference is a very precise linking together several writers having in S.S. Van Dine their prophet. In fact, from The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine (1930), other novels derive their plot, referring variously to Egyptian civilization: The Egyptian Cross Mystery by Ellery Queen (1932), Arrogant Alibi (1938) by Charles Daly King, even The Man from Tibet (1938) by Clyde B. Clason in Tibet, that reads a story that comes verbatim from the novel by Van Dine. Do not forget that at the very beginning of the last century are ascribed important archaeological discoveries in Egypt (for example, the discovery of the tomb of Tut-Ank-Amon), the immediate media coverage both in Europe and in America, and that their European and American archaeologists were engaged in those years in Egypt and the Middle East.  

And let's not forget either, that before Van Dine thought to set one of the adventures of Philo Vance in a museum of Egyptology, he had already thought Richard Austin Freeman to conceive a novel in which for various reasons was talk of Egypt: The Eye of Osiris (1911). And the rest of the way as Ellery treats matter, causes its culture encyclopedic be underpinned directly to his archetype, i.e. Philo Vance by  S.S. Van Dine.
But then comes the epilogue and then the mystery will be revealed after a terrifying succession of twists and turns that starting feuds and vendettas consumed in the mountains of Montenegro, through a series of clues inconsistent: a Tarzan loincloth, a piece of check, pipes, ansate crux, a package hidden under the key of a piano, will reveal the perfect plan of a sick mind, a murderer implacable, that would never have been caught if he had not committed an insignificant error: why to disinfect a wound, would have to take a bottle of tincture of iodine without the label, when there was another one available and with so much information?
One detail that only Ellery analytical mind can frame in all its light, fitting perfectly in the puzzle so that it gives a sense of the rest.

During the period in which you create this remarkable novel, however, is not the first time that we speak of Montenegro in mystery: even Rex Stout, who was also a follower of Van Dine in the early novels, he created his main character and most successful, Nero Wolfe , attributed, after a birth in Trenton New Jersey, the Montenegrin origin.
The purity of the breed had always attracted more than one writer, and that they were Montenegrins, as in the case in question, or Corsicans, as in Colomba by Prosper Mérimée, what attracted was also the impulse of feeling, not mediated by any element civilized: strong hate and strong love, interesting elements for the writers who lived life experiences in multiracial nations even then, such as France at the end of the century or America at the beginning of the twentieth century, home of all those who wanted to start a new life there.
Besides, having chosen a subject like this, and have dabbled  the novel in the blood, it is only a reference distance of everything shed in the wars of the Balkan Peninsula, that evidently to a civilized consciousness appeared to be a tribute too high and too unreasonable for not amplify well, also and only at a mystery.

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Helen McCloy : Through a Glass, Darkly (1950)

Some novels  I read in a single blow, putting one or two days, and there are others that takes me a bit more time: I read this in a longer time than other equally challenging.
The thing may seem a pseudo-problem, because it related to subjectivity; in reality its importance has it: the length of the reading of this novel, in my opinion is related to the expectation that you can have. If you read it, like any novel, there is already half a disappointment, because the space before the first offense is too long, if you read it as a supernatural thriller it can be very charming; if, finally, you read it, as in my case, because it has been lauded by the great critics of the "Looked Room", the attitude of reading oscillates between love and hate.
Because, now, after reading it, and re-reading it a second time to be more secure, I didn't figure it to be called a Locked Room.
Through a Glass, Darkly (1950) was written by Helen McCloy, from a short story she had written two years before,“Through a Glass Darkly”, published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in September 1948. She is called by many critics the greatest woman writer of detective genre in America: in addition to this novel, that is her most famous, Helen McCloy who was also married to hard-boiled writer Brett Halliday, creator of private detective Mike Shayne, wrote other novels always with his main character, the psychiatrist Basil Willing, including his other masterpiece novel Mr. Splitfoot (1968).
In several novels, McCloy addresses the issue of the crime impossible, for example in Mr. Splitfoot: Mr. Splitfoot is another name for Satan define (the charade is explanatory). It seems curious note that a character at Through a Glass, Darkly , the object of our analysis, the Director of the School Brereton, is called Mrs. "Lightfoot", as the later "Splitfoot" used elsewhere: the common denominator may be the supernatural call, which can be attributed to the characters in question. In fact, Mrs. Lightfoot is one of the people who claims as Miss Faustina Crayle, the hapless protagonist of the novel, was persecuted by his double if not the evoked with his feelings.
This Faustina is a teacher very unfortunate, because where she is teaching, tends to obscure events occur, i.e. her inexplicable dislocations in different places, in front of witnesses, who swear that while Faustina was engaged to paint, her dual sat elsewhere before their sight aghast. In fact, the origin of the double, the “Doppelganger”, can be attributed to the belief that they experience near death of a person, and that was a manifestation of supernatural origin.

This kind of ghost, which creates an aura of mystery, terror, suspicion, and slander about Faustina, real or perceived, means that she has to change seat of learning frequently. Until something happens that is not properly connected to the supernatural: Alice Aitchinson dies, a student who hated Faustina. She dies, breaking his neck, falling down a stairway.
Someone swears he saw Faustina just before the Aitchinson fall, but this is not possible, because in the meantime Faustina is miles away. It’s this a Locked Room? It is because the murderess some persons say they looked her from a distance, she would seem to be evaporated? I do not know. It is certain that this does not seem a "Locked Room" in the strict sense, as there are the qualities that make it impossible to crime, except that the murderess seems to have split in two different places. But what we will see, invests more the sphere of the supernatural or would-be than anything else.
Accidental death? Suicide or something? It 'obvious that slander now reach the summit, so much so that Basil Willing, the boyfriend of Gisela von Hohenems, a colleague of Faustina, encouraged as a psychiatrist to deal with such events para-psychic, feels the need to defend Faustina. Until that even Faustina died in a way that frees the murderess, if he was stopped, from any possible accusation against him: Faustina injured, nothing that can connect to an assault or act of violence.
She died for a heart attack, and it is Gisela find her, on a dark night in the cottage where Faustina was going to stay. A cottage that belonged to the mother of Faustina, Pink Diamond, a famous maintained high board, and before that it had belonged to one of his lovers.

The testament of Rose, entrusted to his legatee, says if Faustina were to die, the jewelry that her mother has given to daughter would be returned to their rightful owners (heirs of those who had donated to her at the time) even if there were , otherwise would be added to the rest. In short, a good motive to kill her. Why, if she died for a heart attack?
Here, too, I do not really think that there’s a Locked Room: Faustina opens the door and sees that the lighting does not work out so he needs to look for a light switch: she leaves her luggage at the door, which remains open and she enters. The taxi driver who took her home, says that in practice he did not see anyone leave, since the house was in his view until he put back into the path of the forest from which he came, but in the opposite direction. However, the murderess could have been dressed in black, and take advantage of the dark to avoid being seen. Not only. Gisela takes time to get to the cottage, time that could be used in case the killer was there, simply disappearing. But beyond that, Gisela, who is going to Faustina, invests almost a figure in the woods, revealing for a moment, in front of his eyes terrified, Faustina: how could she be there at that time, if the coroner says she was already dead in the house?
Basil Willing demonstrate that the Doppelganger was not really but…of a different nature. If it there wasn’t  a Locked Room, however, it should be a novel about the supernatural. And the method used by the killer to kill, to induce the player to have a heart attack, is the fear: fear of something ancestral, fear of his double, fear of death.

The death, "Der Tod" in German, introduced by male article because he was represented by a knight with scythe, on a black horse, appears in many poems, when the man is about to pass away. The fear of  Faustina to see herself, her Doppelganger, could be related to the fear of being about to die, what then happens. Moreover, the Doppelganger is attested in many literary texts and in the tradition of Central European countries, as a figure appeared, which could be seen only on the bias, with one eye, only near death.
Now the title of the novel, can have a triple meaning: it may allude to the verse of  St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12: ".. βλεπομεν γαρ αρτι δι εσοπτρου εν αινιγματι ", "For now we see through a glass, darkly"; it could allude, in my opinion, the way to commit the second murder: ".. as in a mirror, in the dark." The protagonist was led to see herself, since the murderer has built, based on the absence of light, a mirror, transforming a large glass door, with doors opening at the center of the room, in a craft but tremendously effective mirror.
And it could finally reconnect the eponymous anthology of short stories of the great novelist and Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: In a Glass Darkly, in which Dr. Martin Hesselius investigates cases the limit of the paranormal and can be found in references to the theme of Doppelganger : for example in The Familiar, version of the story appeared in The Watcher in the previous collection Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery (1851), and in Mr Justice Harbottle. Dr. Hesselius, this singular figure of detective before his time, paid to the paranormal, will also make Dr. Fell by John Dickson Carr, if not Colonel March always by Carr.
Through a Glass, Darkly, rather than being another, is a novel that mixes very cleverly and intelligently elements of thriller and the supernatural. It 's very close to or even tributary of The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr which is today still the best example of the mixture of supernatural and crime stories, so as to be taken as an object as an example of fantastic literature (besides Helen McCloy dedicated to Carr and his wife Clarice, her novel Alias ​​Basil Willing).
In this, the novel McCloy, is really built in a wonderful way, and that is tributary to the Carr's novel, it shows the ending very cleverly alludes to Carr with his double hypothesis: the rational, built by Willing at the expense of  killer; the irrational at which the killer, as long as he is the killer of course, will never be accused by any court for the murder happened while he was away: he is accused by Willing only on the basis of a series of clues, very skillfully stuck. However, they are clues, no courts : on these an English-speaking country could put on trial him.

He knows it and Willing knows it, although Basil Willing would expect at least on that occasion, an admission that at least, if it had not the merit of bringing to life Faustina, may clear the field of any supernatural dispute

Only that the accused, not only continues to profess himself innocent, but also he reinforces the supernatural thesis, so it remains the Hamlet-like doubt.

I emphasize "Hamlet doubt", because I think the end, the last line of this intense dialogue, which concludes the novel, the last page, when the murderer looking at the sky and smiling to himself, says to Willing “only God knows what happens up there”, Helen McCloy  links to Shakespeare:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Pietro De Palma

My new short essay or long article about John Dickson Carr, on "Blog del Giallo Mondadori":

A few minutes ago was published in the "Blog of the Giallo Mondadori" my new short essay or long article - if you prefer - about Carr:

 http://blog.librimondadori.it/blogs/ilgiallomondadori/2012/10/08/king-arthur%E2%80%99s-chair-l%E2%80%99etica-in-carr/

The great writer, who is also my favorite, I have devoted more essays, including one about "The Third Bullet", another about "The first four Bencolin's stories", and yet another, very long, in three parts, on "The History of Locked-Room Lecture in The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr."

The latter writing takes into exam ethical aspects of Carr, examining his wonderful story: "King Arthur's Chair", and presenting an alternative reading of it and, I believe, stimulating

In the future, I could present it in this blog, but for the moment, to read it you need to know the Italian language  or help with web translators.

Pietro De Palma

Michael Innes: The Gay Phoenix, 1976

To distracted or occasional reader, Innes says very little. But to the most careful and frequent visitor to the library, the same name remembers the extraordinary debut, entitled Death at the President's Lodging (1936),  “Morte nello studio del rettore”, published years ago in the series "I Bassotti" by Publishing House Polillo.
Appleby, perhaps, is the investigator most caught in the literature at all, as much as Philo Vance is in the visual arts and sculptures. Moreover, while Philo Vance was the creature of Willard Huntington Wright, great art critic of  New York and connoisseur of Nietzsche, Appleby was the creature of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who, just for fun, as he said, wrote the over fifty titles, under the pseudonym Michael Innes. In fact, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart was a professor, lent to the detective story, as Cecil Day-Lewis (aka Nicholas Blake), or as Alfred Bennett Harbage (aka Thomas Kyd): taught at Oxford, English Literature. Of his profession at university, in his novels there are many testimonies learned: quotations from Shakespeare, other English poets, quotations from Latin poets and writers as well as a prose extremely polished and refined. However, if in the earlier novels, these features are amplified, they tend gradually with the passage of time, to fade, although appearing here and there.
The novel that we look today, The Gay Phoenix, was published in 1976, although in Italy was published in 1979. The title refers to the name of the boat, on which occurs an event that affects the entire plot.

Arthur and Charles Povey are two brothers, minor and major. They have embarked on a sailing boat and are going through the ocean. There aren’t other people on that boat: two personalities in comparison. In childhood you have never taken so much, if Arthur in a woodshed has cut off the index finger of the left hand of Charles. Beyond that, and beyond the fact that Arthur is the lower, the two brothers are linked by an identical fate: they were never the shanks saints, even if what they did was more an expression of a life bored, than a personality prone to crime.

However, something must have crept not honest, if it is true that their activities are more prone to legal situations not clear. And it is for this reason that we understand how Charles had at some point decided to take off, that is, to escape, to disappear without a trace, on board a boat. But since not practical, has repeatedly asked and obtained from his younger brother Arthur, who accompanied him, since more experienced than him driving a sailboat.
The fact is that is not explained, why Arthur has embarked himself, and because no one else is on board, you might as well assume that, fleeing the economic unclear, they would not have witnesses.
During a storm, a mast breaks and falls on poor Charles, smashing his skull. Arthur, poor and helpless, and also under the thumb of their financial situation is not rosy than his brother, heir to the family of substances and skillful and ruthless businessman, suddenly becomes the heir of all the assets of fellowship. However, while changing its basic economic prospects, he realizes that his personal situation becomes more delicate: how will you convince not to have deliberately killed his brother to steal birthright and property of the family, as well as substances of which Charles became heir?
First it has to dispose of the body before it starts to decompose. So throw overboard the body. He puts up his masterpiece: he will behave in such way that the people he may have to do, on his return (they will appear as a castaway who has been through a lot), convince him to be that Charles, he decided to impersonate since the incident: for that thing, he cut (and that act of courage! or despair!) the index of his left hand. Curious (and brilliant )by Innes. that one can become another person, only cutting a finger! But it is so because the two brothers, roughly resembled a lot.

Arthur will tell he has left alone without Charles, because a tree fell on the ship, smashing his skull (which is true). To Arthur will miss only a finger that to Charles was missing before departure, not to Arthur . And he will tell to suffer severe headaches and memory loss (but this is the truth). And psychiatrists will worry about  to convince him he is not Arthur but Charles. When he will be convinced of it, they let him go.
What a masterpiece! Arthur reached the summit and the longed-for economic happiness with a trick worthy of a brilliant mind. But he does not know that one of the psychiatrists speaks at a meeting of friends and acquaintances, and among they at least two are more doubtful than the others: a judge, and the Chief Police. Which is Appleby.
The story weaves in practice various levels of fiction: in the first person, and what is told by others, either. In the same way, in which in the poor mind destroyed by accident, the two personalities of the two brothers alternate. Poor Arthur is suffering about a split identity, a question relating to schizophrenia:  when he is in itself, it is Arthur must behave as if he were Charles; when his personality is subject to Charles, he knows him to be, but does not understand the rest. In short it is a situation disarming.
The poor (or rich, depending on your point of view) Arthur, begins to make the life of the Nawab. His misfortune, however, is to meet a day, the only person who should never meet: one of his servants, that have functions in the family home abnormal, going in the garden or in the house as needed, who helped him in more occasions when he (Arthur) was young, as when he, Arthur, had taken a cigar from the house of a wealthy landowner in his neighborhood.

The servant, who, in the hotel where Arthur is, performs the task of emptying ashtrays, recognizes a particular that no one so far had not noticed: the hair, which, unlike his brother, grew in their own way . The fact is that from that moment, Butter becomes a ball of foot, if not the true master of Arthur. Arthur promises to the hush money in exchange for ten thousand pounds, but Butter is not of the same opinion: he realized that he had caught the goose that lays golden eggs and does not want to pass up.
For a moment Arthur is also believed to kill him. This happens when by accident, in a pub on the pier, he is mistaken for another character, and learns that Butter is a criminal and he is in a bad situation: his accomplices, believing that he wants to betray them, they decided to kill him

Arthur thinks at first to play the game, and to provide them a way to kill him, so his problems will be solved. But at the last moment ... he decides to help Butter: he is not a murderer, despite Butter believes that he has killed his brother, and in doing so Arthur signed his life sentence. Here are comparing two persons: the villain, who manages to get away with it (Butter) and half a point (Arthur) that just can not be the villain that is Butter.
Butter convinces him to build the personality of the rich tycoon who does not want to have relations with the world andto return to his birthplace. It 'a big mistake. Because if the first he was just trying to unravel the network of companies and uncleaned businesses of Charles, fleeing creditors, taking refuge in a place like Brockholes, with the personality of Charles, he confronts himself with a reality not assumed: reality of many sexual adventures of Charles. As Arthur could not know "the ladies" friends of Charles, but as Charles they should become familiar.
Charles not only had fucked servings and maids, not only he made sex with "innocent girls" campaign of a desire to please the landowner, but also, by virtue of so much money he had, he had collected a series of adventures with ring and paid prostitutes by other board, with maintained women that they had replenished his book of playboy but he could not remember anything. Imagine how Arthur must feel, whom he had heard mention in the confessions of his brother, but that he had never met! The fact is that one day he meets a bitch, who, in turn, doesn’t recognizes him as his brother, despite the severed finger, by the way he had sex with her: another ball and chain.

It isn’t a Innes of first manner, but a novel of great charm, The Gay Phoenix, with a strong psychological tension, arising from the mastery by Innes, who plays with the infinite possibilities that imagination suggests. Furthermore, also here he inserts the theme of substitution of persons, which is one of ihis characteristics. This time he associates it with a split personality, which leaves banned until the end. It is a contortion, a scrambling that reminds me, in some ways, Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand, in a situation which is known from the beginning, but then there for the duration of the book a grueling chase, and a continuous rollover situations, as in this case. At Innes's novel, however, there isn’t the murder: there is an accident, that people thinks to be murder, but it is not. At the end of the novel is feared the possibility that the disappearance of a person can be framed in a murder, but it is a possibility that fades as it appears.

Poised between “feuelliton” situations and adventure novel, The Gay Phoenix, seems to retrace the atmosphere of the novels of Henry Holt and Sax Rohmer, with the corollary of the characters and the whirlwind of adventures that surrounds the main action. In this novel has everything: the international bandwidth, fraud, impersonation, the split personality, a murder-incident, a double blackmail, embezzlement, investigation and solution to the wire, the bluff. In other words, situations, always to keep the tension high.
There are marked sexual connotations of the situations that the plot suggests, and especially in this mystery, sex acquires its meaning: if Charles had not collected casual encounters and relationships with high-class prostitutes and maintained, and he had not obsessed Arthur with the story of his amatory exploits, Arthur  would not have thrown caution to the wind and proposed to one of those "sluts", Perpetua Porter called "Pops," that ".. there are times when the facts are more urgent than words"; and if it were not this fuck, on the park’s grass, Pops would never have realized that Arthur was not Charles, as she accuses him, he should be very careful when he should go to bed with any kind of ladies who were friends of Charles. In practice, and to be frank, she strongly recommends him going  to make elsewhere these things. And before she had said it (sex)  had been quite nice but not as good as it was with Charles Povey.

In short it is as if she had stabbed him with a dagger, so his words were sharp, says Innes ".. studied with malice. To put it short, Charles had made her enjoy, not Arthur.
So, if Pops had never realized that Arthur was not Charles, there would be no subsequent blackmail Pops against Arthur.
And even more, if Charles had not collected sex with the girls in the village, no one would ever reproached alleged paternity to Arthur.
Furthermore there is also a certain connotation gay or better a connotation bisex: the sailboat on which it consumes the story is called The Gay Phoenix. It seems to me the title might suggest a certain value homosexual or bisexual by Arthur: when he make sex with women, doesn’t get great results and it is as if sex was something for him must be done to prove something (perhaps to himself or to others), rather than something he chooses to make. In this case, The Phoenix Gay would be nothing but an elegant way (refined in the choice of terms) with which Innes marks the latent homosexuality of Arthur: the phoenix is ​​a mythical bird that rises from its ashes, and in this case Charles rises from its ashes, in the person of Arthur. Arthur  is the Phoenix. His homosexuality mentioned in several parts of the story, his bad luck with women, it could also be derived from the reports it says he entertained when he was young with his servant Butter, which then recognizes him, and becomes, as Pops, his master.

Furthermore, the fact that Arthur becomes slave of both, voluntary (he could facilitate the murder of Butter by his former accomplices, but he does not, knowing that it will sign his sentence; he throws his arms, even better, we should say, between the legs, of Pops: doing so he gives himself unconsciously to his rule), it may give rise to the suspicion that he masochistically basically wants to be dominated. But, the fact then he circles in all ways to break free from their heavy yoke, and he will succeed at the end, could mean that only one, between the two figures that in him act, is passive, while the other is not it.

Pietro De Palma