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The Great Merlini #2
The Footprints on the Ceiling
Merlini investigates murder in a haunted house on an island. There is even a touch of humor here along with a couple of inside jokes. - The Mystery Lover's Companion, Art Bourgeau
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1939
16 people are currently reading
152 people want to read
About the author
Clayton Rawson
46 books14 followersAka Stuart Towne.
Clayton Rawson (1906 - 1971) was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a principal character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it.
Clayton Rawson (1906 - 1971) was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a principal character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 3, 2025
It all starts with a strange ad in the newspaper. Ross Harte thinks it's a joke and he's not alone.
It turns out the ad is not a joke. It has been placed by Harte's old friend, Merlini the magician. Merlini supposedly retired two years earlier and set up shop "selling miracles." He creates magic tricks to order for fellow magicians:
Merlini's shop assistant, Burt Fawkes, was formerly known as "TWISTO, The Man Who Turns Himself Inside Out." And, yes, there is a white rabbit (Peter Rabbit) in residence.
Merlini is producing a radio show that investigates supposedly haunted houses. He is going to Skelton Island to check out a haunted house. He is also going to investigate (and hopefully expose) a fake psychic, Eva Rappourt, who was first encountered in Death from a Top Hat. Her former champion, Colonel Watrous, is finally having doubts about her authenticity. It seems simple enough, but it isn't by a long shot.
When Merlini and Harte meet up with Watrous on Skelton Island, they discover the body of Linda Skelton, the wealthy owner of Skelton Island. Linda was scared of open spaces (agoraphobia), so what is she doing so far away from her own home? Then there's the sunken treasure in the HMS Hussar, which lies at the bottom of the East River in New York, a man who died of the bends in a locked room on the 21st floor of a New York City hotel, and the mysterious blue-skinned man. Things are starting to get very complicated indeed.
Clayton Rawson's Merlini books are always delightful fun with their mysterious, exotic atmosphere, convoluted plots, and humor. Sometimes they get a little too complex, like in this case where the explanation of the solution runs several pages. Sometimes I have to reread the solution to figure out what is going on. However, that does not detract from my enjoyment of these mysteries. They are great fun and are definitely worth trying out.
I also recommend the other Merlini books:
No Coffin for the Corpse
The Headless Lady
The Great Merlini: The Complete Stories of the Magician Detective
Death from a Top Hat
"Wanted to Rent: HAUNTED HOUSE
Preferably in run down condition.
Must be adequately supplied with
interesting ghost. Write details, location,
history, price, K 492 World-
Telegram"
It turns out the ad is not a joke. It has been placed by Harte's old friend, Merlini the magician. Merlini supposedly retired two years earlier and set up shop "selling miracles." He creates magic tricks to order for fellow magicians:
"If you desired to levitate a lady in midair, pierce her through and through with swords, bisect her visibly with a buzz saw, stretch her to twice her length, burn her alive, or make her instantly vanish, all without harm, he would quote you prices, either for blueprints or for the finished apparatus in tested working order. His own professional methods for producing bowls of goldfish from thin air, baking cakes in borrowed hats, walking through brick walls, causing mentally select cards to rise from a deck, escaping from bolted coffins, and growing fully matured rosebushes in three minutes were used by many of the magicians for whom his shop served as a meeting place and unofficial clubroom. Entering Merlini's shop on a day when his conjuring customers had foregathered there was like stepping into some Arabian Nights Never-Never Land where, at the slightest provocation, anything might happen - and did."
Merlini's shop assistant, Burt Fawkes, was formerly known as "TWISTO, The Man Who Turns Himself Inside Out." And, yes, there is a white rabbit (Peter Rabbit) in residence.
Merlini is producing a radio show that investigates supposedly haunted houses. He is going to Skelton Island to check out a haunted house. He is also going to investigate (and hopefully expose) a fake psychic, Eva Rappourt, who was first encountered in Death from a Top Hat. Her former champion, Colonel Watrous, is finally having doubts about her authenticity. It seems simple enough, but it isn't by a long shot.
When Merlini and Harte meet up with Watrous on Skelton Island, they discover the body of Linda Skelton, the wealthy owner of Skelton Island. Linda was scared of open spaces (agoraphobia), so what is she doing so far away from her own home? Then there's the sunken treasure in the HMS Hussar, which lies at the bottom of the East River in New York, a man who died of the bends in a locked room on the 21st floor of a New York City hotel, and the mysterious blue-skinned man. Things are starting to get very complicated indeed.
Clayton Rawson's Merlini books are always delightful fun with their mysterious, exotic atmosphere, convoluted plots, and humor. Sometimes they get a little too complex, like in this case where the explanation of the solution runs several pages. Sometimes I have to reread the solution to figure out what is going on. However, that does not detract from my enjoyment of these mysteries. They are great fun and are definitely worth trying out.
I also recommend the other Merlini books:
No Coffin for the Corpse
The Headless Lady
The Great Merlini: The Complete Stories of the Magician Detective
Death from a Top Hat
October 30, 2025
Lionel RIchie has nothing to do with this novel.
They're doing psychic research on an island in the East River. There's even a haunted house. Strange things happen, and of course, the inevitable murder. Fortunately, Merlini is there to investigate, because the cops were lucky to even find the island!
A bit of a satire, as every murder mystery cliche is included and commented upon. There's really too much going on to keep track of everything.
They're doing psychic research on an island in the East River. There's even a haunted house. Strange things happen, and of course, the inevitable murder. Fortunately, Merlini is there to investigate, because the cops were lucky to even find the island!
A bit of a satire, as every murder mystery cliche is included and commented upon. There's really too much going on to keep track of everything.
June 17, 2017
Another locked room mystery, except this locked room is an island that has been made impossible to get off of for a while!
This is my fourth book with Merlini (though it is the 2nd listed) featured as the detective and it is quite enjoyable. It has a lot of action, various members of the circus or spiritualists, much misdirection, and well! Murder left, right, and even transported off the island itself! Rawson uses the element of misdirection superbly. (For those who write and and want to see it in shorter format refer to the collection of short stories featuring Merlini.)
Merlini is asked to come to an island where he is to expose a fraud seance. He arrives to find a murder, an old dilapidated homestead, and a newer one, a quest to find the Skeleton family treasure somewhere in the depths nearby and enough people with designs of their own to sink ships left and right.
This must have been one heck of a plot outline for Rawson, it certainly is involved and meticulous; that being said, it is wonderful to try and figure it out with Merlini, Harte and Insp. Gavigan. In many ways, you could say it was over the top! but that is what makes the story fun to read. It also has a "instant karma" element to it as well.
It really is a shame that Rawson didn't write more of these mysteries! Enjoy them if you can find them in your library, if not they seem to all be on e-book format which is fantastic.
This is my fourth book with Merlini (though it is the 2nd listed) featured as the detective and it is quite enjoyable. It has a lot of action, various members of the circus or spiritualists, much misdirection, and well! Murder left, right, and even transported off the island itself! Rawson uses the element of misdirection superbly. (For those who write and and want to see it in shorter format refer to the collection of short stories featuring Merlini.)
Merlini is asked to come to an island where he is to expose a fraud seance. He arrives to find a murder, an old dilapidated homestead, and a newer one, a quest to find the Skeleton family treasure somewhere in the depths nearby and enough people with designs of their own to sink ships left and right.
This must have been one heck of a plot outline for Rawson, it certainly is involved and meticulous; that being said, it is wonderful to try and figure it out with Merlini, Harte and Insp. Gavigan. In many ways, you could say it was over the top! but that is what makes the story fun to read. It also has a "instant karma" element to it as well.
It really is a shame that Rawson didn't write more of these mysteries! Enjoy them if you can find them in your library, if not they seem to all be on e-book format which is fantastic.
June 21, 2021
My first by this author.
If you could imigine wading through mud while being surrounded by smoke and mirrors, then you might just about capture my experience of this novel.
The Great Merlini belongs to the irritating know-it-all class of detectives, and the author to the painful parader of encyclopaedic knowledge school of writers.
The set up was brilliant, with a haunted house, private island, agoraphobic murderee, phoney medium, sunken treasure, poisons and gangsters making a heady brew.
Unfortunately there was the classic soggy middle to the plot, and too many lectures on various topics to hide that fact.
It goes on too long, so long that I thought I had to be wrong about the perpetrator.
I may try again and I gather that the Don Diavolo stories are worth a shot.
3.5 stars for another American classic which did not deliver for me.
If you could imigine wading through mud while being surrounded by smoke and mirrors, then you might just about capture my experience of this novel.
The Great Merlini belongs to the irritating know-it-all class of detectives, and the author to the painful parader of encyclopaedic knowledge school of writers.
The set up was brilliant, with a haunted house, private island, agoraphobic murderee, phoney medium, sunken treasure, poisons and gangsters making a heady brew.
Unfortunately there was the classic soggy middle to the plot, and too many lectures on various topics to hide that fact.
It goes on too long, so long that I thought I had to be wrong about the perpetrator.
I may try again and I gather that the Don Diavolo stories are worth a shot.
3.5 stars for another American classic which did not deliver for me.
March 8, 2021
Though the mystery is plotted as intricately as clockwork, with a mystery veteran's suspicion of worn tropes, the dialogue is really the strong suit of this novel. Rawson really has an ear for conversation and characterization, and I love how the characters argue, and the way they each have their own goals. It makes for a great, lively mystery, and that's before you factor in all the stage magic.
September 25, 2014
It's not enough that Clayton Rawson's Great Merlini has to answer the question of how a woman with an acute case of agoraphobia could be found dead in a room in a house on the opposite end of the island from where she lives. It's not enough that the room she's found in has a trail of footprints crossing the ceiling. It's not enough that someone sets fire to the house while Merlini is investigating the death. It's not enough that the case winds up including a fraudulent medium, a hunt for sunken treasure, a gangster with (of all things) the name of Charles Lamb, a man with blue skin, and a bullet that can either go round corners or straight through steel and concrete. No, wait, there's more! There's also a nude man found dead in a locked hotel room...and not just dead. Dead of the bends....in a perfectly dry room, a mile or so from the nearest water. As Inspector Gavigan says:
Instead of the usual murder victim in a locked room...we've got a body, dead from natural causes, and the question--How'd he get in, and how'd his clothes get out? The desk clerk, the elevator boy, and the floor clerk on twenty-one say they never saw him before--that might be on account of the missing mustache. But they'd certainly have noticed if he was running around the place without any clothes.
What's a magician detective to do? Well...he better get busy figuring out what tricks the murderer has up his sleeves...
...because all the amateur dicks in town are gunning for your job. When the papers hit the streets, all hell broke loose at headquarters. Philo Vance has been crowding his friend, the D. A. He wants to kick this case around. Says it's right up his bloomin' alley, don't you know. Ellery Queen's campaigning to get his old man assigned to it so he can get a look see, and Malloy says that awhile ago he saw Archie Goodwin circling the island in a speedboat, looking the situation over. Nero Wolfe's seen that mention of the eight million bucks. (Inspector Gavigan to Merlini)
But, perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself. Let's go back...Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) is Rawson's second mystery novel featuring The Great Merlini, a professional magician who also runs a magic supply shop and who occasionally works as an amateur detective and debunker of spiritualism. It is in this last capacity that he has been called upon to visit Skelton Island and observe Madame Rappout to prove once and for all whether her psychic manifestations are the real deal or just another way of taking in the gullible. He brings along his friend Ross Harte, publicity writer to provide the wise-cracking sidekick and narrator. As the seance begins in the main house, Merlini, Ross, and their host Colonel Watrous discover Linda Skelton, wealthy heiress, believer in the occult, and island recluse, dead in an outbuilding with all evidence of suicide. There's just one tiny problem. As described above, it is revealed that Linda suffered from an acute case of agoraphobia. There is no way that she could have traveled across the island to kill herself.
Then, of course, there's the other dead body in the hotel room. It looks like natural causes, but it is soon revealed that he's died of "the bends"--an ailment peculiar to deep-sea divers. How did he managed that on dry land? And where are his clothes. Even if he did die "naturally" from the ailment, someone had to have taken his clothes...which makes things mighty suspicious.
Inspector Gavigan spends the rest of the book alternately suspecting, cautioning, and arresting everyone with a hint of a motive--sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. Merlini spends his time building up scenarios in which any of them might have done it, leading us on and making us believe that he...no she...no not them, but he did it. Blowing smoke in our eyes, using mirrors, and artful doses of misdirection, until the grand finale and the big reveal.
The first half to two-thirds of this classic crime novel is excellent. The set-up, misdirection, and mystification are all first-rate.This was my first Merlini novel and I thoroughly enjoyed my introduction to the magician and Ross Harte (who reminds me of Archie Goodwin in wisecracks--but I don't think he's quite as swift on the uptake as Archie). However, the last third and dénouement has way too much going on and there is a bit too much of the "let's show you how X is the culprit and then presto...no, they aren't the murderer, but they did do this." The best thing about the solution is that it actually makes sense and requires no supernatural hocus-pocus. The other quibble I have which makes this a ★★★ and 1/2 read instead of four stars (although I will round up on Goodreads) is the amount of specialized knowledge--ranging from the medical to darkroom techniques to deep-sea diving--that is needed to recognize various clues.
But...you can tell that Rawson had a lot of fun with this one and the reader is caught up in the fun and in trying to untangle the intricate plot. Overall, a recommended read.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
Instead of the usual murder victim in a locked room...we've got a body, dead from natural causes, and the question--How'd he get in, and how'd his clothes get out? The desk clerk, the elevator boy, and the floor clerk on twenty-one say they never saw him before--that might be on account of the missing mustache. But they'd certainly have noticed if he was running around the place without any clothes.
What's a magician detective to do? Well...he better get busy figuring out what tricks the murderer has up his sleeves...
...because all the amateur dicks in town are gunning for your job. When the papers hit the streets, all hell broke loose at headquarters. Philo Vance has been crowding his friend, the D. A. He wants to kick this case around. Says it's right up his bloomin' alley, don't you know. Ellery Queen's campaigning to get his old man assigned to it so he can get a look see, and Malloy says that awhile ago he saw Archie Goodwin circling the island in a speedboat, looking the situation over. Nero Wolfe's seen that mention of the eight million bucks. (Inspector Gavigan to Merlini)
But, perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself. Let's go back...Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) is Rawson's second mystery novel featuring The Great Merlini, a professional magician who also runs a magic supply shop and who occasionally works as an amateur detective and debunker of spiritualism. It is in this last capacity that he has been called upon to visit Skelton Island and observe Madame Rappout to prove once and for all whether her psychic manifestations are the real deal or just another way of taking in the gullible. He brings along his friend Ross Harte, publicity writer to provide the wise-cracking sidekick and narrator. As the seance begins in the main house, Merlini, Ross, and their host Colonel Watrous discover Linda Skelton, wealthy heiress, believer in the occult, and island recluse, dead in an outbuilding with all evidence of suicide. There's just one tiny problem. As described above, it is revealed that Linda suffered from an acute case of agoraphobia. There is no way that she could have traveled across the island to kill herself.
Then, of course, there's the other dead body in the hotel room. It looks like natural causes, but it is soon revealed that he's died of "the bends"--an ailment peculiar to deep-sea divers. How did he managed that on dry land? And where are his clothes. Even if he did die "naturally" from the ailment, someone had to have taken his clothes...which makes things mighty suspicious.
Inspector Gavigan spends the rest of the book alternately suspecting, cautioning, and arresting everyone with a hint of a motive--sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. Merlini spends his time building up scenarios in which any of them might have done it, leading us on and making us believe that he...no she...no not them, but he did it. Blowing smoke in our eyes, using mirrors, and artful doses of misdirection, until the grand finale and the big reveal.
The first half to two-thirds of this classic crime novel is excellent. The set-up, misdirection, and mystification are all first-rate.This was my first Merlini novel and I thoroughly enjoyed my introduction to the magician and Ross Harte (who reminds me of Archie Goodwin in wisecracks--but I don't think he's quite as swift on the uptake as Archie). However, the last third and dénouement has way too much going on and there is a bit too much of the "let's show you how X is the culprit and then presto...no, they aren't the murderer, but they did do this." The best thing about the solution is that it actually makes sense and requires no supernatural hocus-pocus. The other quibble I have which makes this a ★★★ and 1/2 read instead of four stars (although I will round up on Goodreads) is the amount of specialized knowledge--ranging from the medical to darkroom techniques to deep-sea diving--that is needed to recognize various clues.
But...you can tell that Rawson had a lot of fun with this one and the reader is caught up in the fun and in trying to untangle the intricate plot. Overall, a recommended read.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
January 27, 2018
Merlini. Need we say more?
September 1, 2019
Great fun. Just like being in a 1940's movie.
Want to read
February 17, 2020Synopsis: Art Bourgeau describes it: Merlini investigates murder in a haunted house on an island. There is even a touch of humour!
April 25, 2022
Amusing but too confusing
August 30, 2023
Way to convoluted.
September 1, 2011
The Footprints on the Ceiling, published in 1939, was the second of only four Great Merlini novels written by Rawson. The combination of stage magic and murder is always a winner in my opinion and this one is interesting in that the magic is not just there for background colour. Rawson’s idea was that the art of the illusionist is based largely on misdirection, and so is the fine art of murder (at least in the hands of a true artist of crime).
And the art of the detective consists in doing precisely the reverse - stripping away the layers of misdirection and focusing on the things the murderer is hoping the detective will be too distracted to notice. The Footprints on the Ceiling certainly makes extensive use of Rawson’s theory with ingenious evil-doers coming up with fiendish mechanisms to sow confusion in the minds of an investigator. But The Great Merlini is a master of this very art of misdirection and no-one is better qualifies to clear away the fog of bogus clues.
Merlini and his pal Ross Harte are recruited by a leading psychic investigator, Colonel Watrous. The colonel is starting to have doubts about his pet medium, Madame Rappourt. A séance is to conducted at the home of the rather odd Skelton family. Their home is located on an island in New York’s East River. At the same time they can take the opportunity to investigate the family’s original house at the other end of the island, reputed to be haunted. An odd assortment of misfits has been assembled for the séance, but that’s not the only thing attracting them to the island. A British frigate sank in the East River during the Revolutionary War and the wreck is reputed to contain an immense hoard of English gold guineas with a current value of around $8 million. That wreck is believed to lie not far from the Skelton family’s island.
Apart from the $8 million lying on the bottom of the East River there’s also the matter of the Skelton fortune, currently controlled by the wildly eccentric Linda Skelton, and the question of the fate of that fortune were something untoward to happen to Linda. So with that sort of money at stake it’s not entirely surprising when the first murder occurs. But the first murder is a murder that appears to have been impossible, and then the telephone lines are cut and all the boats are sunk. This conveniently sets up the ideal situation for a murder mystery with a limited cast of possible suspects all marooned on the island until next morning.
This mystery will tax the powers even of The Great Merlini.
Aside from the intricate and ingenious plotting Rawson was having a good deal of fun with this story. There’s a good-natured tongue-in-cheek quality to this book with plenty of crime fiction in-jokes.
Rawson manages to weave pirates, sunken treasure, deap-sea diving, haunted houses, spiritualism, magic and murder into his plot. If that hasn’t sold you on the book then nothing will! Highly recommended.
And the art of the detective consists in doing precisely the reverse - stripping away the layers of misdirection and focusing on the things the murderer is hoping the detective will be too distracted to notice. The Footprints on the Ceiling certainly makes extensive use of Rawson’s theory with ingenious evil-doers coming up with fiendish mechanisms to sow confusion in the minds of an investigator. But The Great Merlini is a master of this very art of misdirection and no-one is better qualifies to clear away the fog of bogus clues.
Merlini and his pal Ross Harte are recruited by a leading psychic investigator, Colonel Watrous. The colonel is starting to have doubts about his pet medium, Madame Rappourt. A séance is to conducted at the home of the rather odd Skelton family. Their home is located on an island in New York’s East River. At the same time they can take the opportunity to investigate the family’s original house at the other end of the island, reputed to be haunted. An odd assortment of misfits has been assembled for the séance, but that’s not the only thing attracting them to the island. A British frigate sank in the East River during the Revolutionary War and the wreck is reputed to contain an immense hoard of English gold guineas with a current value of around $8 million. That wreck is believed to lie not far from the Skelton family’s island.
Apart from the $8 million lying on the bottom of the East River there’s also the matter of the Skelton fortune, currently controlled by the wildly eccentric Linda Skelton, and the question of the fate of that fortune were something untoward to happen to Linda. So with that sort of money at stake it’s not entirely surprising when the first murder occurs. But the first murder is a murder that appears to have been impossible, and then the telephone lines are cut and all the boats are sunk. This conveniently sets up the ideal situation for a murder mystery with a limited cast of possible suspects all marooned on the island until next morning.
This mystery will tax the powers even of The Great Merlini.
Aside from the intricate and ingenious plotting Rawson was having a good deal of fun with this story. There’s a good-natured tongue-in-cheek quality to this book with plenty of crime fiction in-jokes.
Rawson manages to weave pirates, sunken treasure, deap-sea diving, haunted houses, spiritualism, magic and murder into his plot. If that hasn’t sold you on the book then nothing will! Highly recommended.
June 14, 2025
The second Great Merlini novel, published in 1939. Clayton Rawson is a minor luminary of the impossible crime subgenre, and given how few novels he wrote, I'm sure I'll get to them all eventually, but he isn't blowing me away so far.
This novel has some merits, but not the ones you'd expect from its pedigree. The impossible crime stuff isn't interesting; in the flurry of events and spectacle, none of it seems to matter very much.
The title footprints are a good example; it seems incredible on the face of it, but the police officer offers an obvious and prosaic explanation for it, and when, towards the end of the novel, a different explanation is offered … sure, I guess, but I hadn't thought of those footprints in hours, and it's pretty extraneous to the crimes at hand.
Elsewhere, a body is found, totally nude, in a hotel room, without any luggage, and it's treated as a mystery, because he couldn't have walked there like that, but … I mean, presumably someone took the clothes off him in the room itself and then left with them? It's not actually very interesting. And when it's all explained, nobody seems excited by the explanation, or really, to act as if a revelation has been made at all; having briefly talked it up, Rawson and the cast quickly lose all interest in the Mystery of the Nude Corpse, and I was never interested in it to begin with. It feels like, having written one impossible crime novel, Rawson felt obligated to follow it with another, but the impossibilities are just kind of there, to be briefly stared at before we move on to other things.
This is a shame, because there's a really compelling mystery hidden away here. The second murder and the motivations of one of the suspects are both remarkable, and for as intricate as it is, things hang together well.
One wishes, however, that the cast was better-drawn; in a mystery all about deceit and betrayal, we actually get to see very little of the players interacting with each other, which should have been a core part of a novel like this. And although Golden Age mystery writers could go a little overboard with their maps, one would have served the reader well here; the entire novel takes place on a small island, and from first to last, I had no idea where anyone's rooms were or where the action was occurring. Towards the end, we suddenly were hearing a lot about a bullet “curving” in an impossible way, and since I have no idea where the shooter is supposed to be in relation to the target, I can't picture it at all.
This novel has some merits, but not the ones you'd expect from its pedigree. The impossible crime stuff isn't interesting; in the flurry of events and spectacle, none of it seems to matter very much.
The title footprints are a good example; it seems incredible on the face of it, but the police officer offers an obvious and prosaic explanation for it, and when, towards the end of the novel, a different explanation is offered … sure, I guess, but I hadn't thought of those footprints in hours, and it's pretty extraneous to the crimes at hand.
Elsewhere, a body is found, totally nude, in a hotel room, without any luggage, and it's treated as a mystery, because he couldn't have walked there like that, but … I mean, presumably someone took the clothes off him in the room itself and then left with them? It's not actually very interesting. And when it's all explained, nobody seems excited by the explanation, or really, to act as if a revelation has been made at all; having briefly talked it up, Rawson and the cast quickly lose all interest in the Mystery of the Nude Corpse, and I was never interested in it to begin with. It feels like, having written one impossible crime novel, Rawson felt obligated to follow it with another, but the impossibilities are just kind of there, to be briefly stared at before we move on to other things.
This is a shame, because there's a really compelling mystery hidden away here. The second murder and the motivations of one of the suspects are both remarkable, and for as intricate as it is, things hang together well.
One wishes, however, that the cast was better-drawn; in a mystery all about deceit and betrayal, we actually get to see very little of the players interacting with each other, which should have been a core part of a novel like this. And although Golden Age mystery writers could go a little overboard with their maps, one would have served the reader well here; the entire novel takes place on a small island, and from first to last, I had no idea where anyone's rooms were or where the action was occurring. Towards the end, we suddenly were hearing a lot about a bullet “curving” in an impossible way, and since I have no idea where the shooter is supposed to be in relation to the target, I can't picture it at all.
April 20, 2009
like a 3.5, really (when will we get this feature?). Two men, one a magician and puzzle solver known as "The Great Merlini," and the other, Ross Harte, are called out to Skelton Island in New York to check out a medium who was planning to hold a seance. As they arrive, they run into trouble immediately and discover a woman dead, seated in a chair. Problem is the woman lived on the other end of the island and never left her house because she had an incredibly severe case of agorophobia. Add to this a fire, footprints in the ceiling in the room where the dead woman was found, a blue man, a man who was discovered dead of the bends in a hotel in New York City, and you've got a very strange case. The Great Merlini and Ross have their hands full, and their job is not made easier with a multitude of suspects.
Not a bad effort, but it is so involved that it begins to be a bit convoluted after a while. The solution to the mysteries is also a bit convoluted but overall, it works. I don't know if I'd classify this is an "impossible crime," but it was an interesting one.
The characterizations fall a bit flat, although I kind of enjoyed the Great Merlini ... a man with a solution to everything. He makes the tough New York cops look a little silly when he sets his mind on problem solving.
This is the second in a series, and I'd recommend it probably only to people who enjoy these Golden-Age mysteries. It may be quite involved for modern readers, and cozy readers may be put off for the same reason. I wouldn't put it on the mystery readers' must haves, but it was okay.
Not a bad effort, but it is so involved that it begins to be a bit convoluted after a while. The solution to the mysteries is also a bit convoluted but overall, it works. I don't know if I'd classify this is an "impossible crime," but it was an interesting one.
The characterizations fall a bit flat, although I kind of enjoyed the Great Merlini ... a man with a solution to everything. He makes the tough New York cops look a little silly when he sets his mind on problem solving.
This is the second in a series, and I'd recommend it probably only to people who enjoy these Golden-Age mysteries. It may be quite involved for modern readers, and cozy readers may be put off for the same reason. I wouldn't put it on the mystery readers' must haves, but it was okay.
August 28, 2016
An old friend asks the Great Merlini and his sidekick Ross Harte to visit a small, privately owned island on the East river to expose a fraudulent medium. The mysteries start before they arrive, when Ross is blackjacked for a suitcase full of antique coins he's found. Then, on Skeleton Island, they find a dead body before the seance can start. The cast of characters doesn't seem especially sinister at first, but everyone is lying, and the phone service from the island has been cut off. When Merlini is finally able to send a message to the police, Inspector Gavigan wants to arrest each suspect in turn--but Merlini knows that the answers are more complex than Gavigan believes.
November 15, 2012
An exhausting mystery, this novel has way too much going on at once. Multiple murders, and everyone is guilty of something. The addition of the magician Merlini solving the case makes the whole thing too gimmicky for my taste. The whole book made my head spin when I was just looking for something light and fun.
September 8, 2017
Clayton Rawson's detective novels featuring Merlini are all fun, as each features magic in its solution. A golden age series which is still entertaining today.
March 3, 2013
Hard to keep track of these plots. Feel like I need a diagram to explain who was doing what to whom. By the time merlini revealed the killer I'd forgotten who he was. Still good though.
May 3, 2016
read SOMETIME in 2006
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