Banner Deadlines: The Impossible Files of Senator Brooks U. Banner

by Joseph Commings

Master of the Impossible! Joseph Commings (1914-1992) created one of the greatest investigators of locked rooms, impossible disappearances and other "miracle crimes" – the gargantuan, harrumphing Senator Brooks U. Banner. During his long career (Banner first appeared in the pulps in 1947), he investigated such crimes as murder at a séance where everyone is holding hands, a strange spectre causing death in the middle of a lake, a killing in a sealed glass case, and a murder by a sword which must have been wielded by a giant. The most extraordinary story of all is "The X Street Murders," in which the victim is shot in a guarded room and the smoking-gun is delivered, a few seconds later, in a sealed envelope next door. This first collection of Senator Banner stories contains 14 cases solved by the buffalo-sized sleuth, including one co-written with Edward D. Hoch and another published for the first time. Banner Deadlines is the 12th in the Crippen & Landru "Lost Classics" series. The collection is edited by locked-room expert Robert Adey; memoir of Joseph Commings by Edward DB. Hoch. The cover painting and layout are by Tom Roberts, and the Lost Classics design is by Deborah Miller.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories included in this book and my rating (one to five stars):

Murder Under Glass - the victim dies inside a huge glass jar that doubles for a sealed room. (***)
Fingerprint Ghost - a murder takes place at a seance in a sealed room that must have been committed by one of the attendees, all of whom were holding a neighbor's hand (***)
The Spectre on the Lake - two men are shot at close range in a canoe in the middle of a lake under observation from the shore (***)
The Black Friar Murders - The murderer vanishes from a stone cell in an old monastery watched by witnesses. (***)
Ghost in the Gallery - the murderer kills and vanishes from a room watched by witnesses. (**)
Death By Black magic - a magician is strangled on stage during his act. (****)
Murderer's Progress - Five men devise puzzles for Banner to figure out and one of them uses the contest to kill one of the other men. (***)
Castanets, Canaries, and Murder - a man is killed while being filmed by a movie camera but the murderer doesn't show up on the film. (***)
The X Street Murders - A businessman is killed by a gun sealed in an envelope held by his secretary. (***)
Hangman's House - a man is found hanging from a chandelier high in a room where no footprints disturb a layer of dust on the floor. (***)
The Giant's Sword - a man is impaled with a gigantic sword that none of the suspects could possibly have handled as a murder weapon. (***)
Stairway to Nowhere (co-authored by Edward D. Hoch) - A girl disappears halfway up a staircase and again from a museum hallway. (**) (Note: actually has the word "hamburglar" in the text.)
The Vampire in the Iron Mask - school children are seemingly being strangled by a fiend with an iron head that can escape from his sealed tomb at will. (*****)
The Whispering Gallery - a magician is chief suspect when his father-in-law is killed by a marksman who seems to have floated upside down in front of his victim. (**)

This is a typical example of the florid, over-the-top writing style of some golden age mystery writers, and Senator Banner bears more than a slight resemblance to John Dickson Carr's Gideon Fell and Henry Merrivale.

I found the dialogue preposterous and Senator Banner's dismissive attitude toward women hard to take, even giving the period it was written in. Probably a must read for devotees of this type of impossible crime fiction, but a casual reader might find it hard going.

[Umer Abbas · Rating 3 out of 5]

After paying upwards of 100 dollars for this one time print and never republished Brooke Banner collection, I have mixed feelings.

"murder under glass, spectre on the lake and the black friar murders use inventive mechanical ways to devise the impossible situations

Ghost in the gallery and Death by Black magic and fingerprint ghost use old gimmicks

Stairway to nowhere is not fairplay at all as some vital information is withheld

Murderer's progress and hangman's house are too far fetched to be even credible

X street murders and Whispering Gallery I was able to guess the gimmicks

The best of the lot if not original in terms of the impossibilities but the complexity of the situation and the way one clue is right under our nose and is revealed in the last line is brilliant.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: the gargantuan, harrumphing Senator Brooks U. Banner is also a genius. He appears here in fourteen short stories from 1947 and after.

[Eddie Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of locked room mysteries starring the character Senator Banner of New York. I love locked room mysteries and hate it when I don't figure out the solution, but with these I solved very few of them so what I'm about to say could be sour grapes on my part though I don't think so. While these mysteries are fair, that is all the clues are given as to how it was done or by who, I didn't feel as though the majority of methods use to pull these crimes off would work in real life. I wouldn't say the explanations for how the crimes were committed were impossible, but did feel they were very, very improbable. Obviously I can't give any specific examples without spoiling them, but they reminded me in a way of the television show MacGyver. The producers of MacGyver use to claim that all of the scientific stunts MacGyver pulled would work in theory, but while that may have been true; in real life some of them were kind of iffy.

Even so I'm giving this book four out of five stars because I loved the character of Senator Banner and the stories were just plain fun! Ex-Salesman, Carnival Barker, Stage Magician turned, somehow, U.S. Senator is a slovenly, flirtatious good ol' boy with a mind like Sherlock Holmes. In an odd sort of way, as opposites will sometimes, he reminded me of Rex Stout's character Nero Wolfe and while on the surface two men could not be more different Banner and Wolfe share the same combination of character and genius that makes both men engaging.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Locked room mysteries? Those are nothing to US Senator Brooks U. Banner. In this collection of short stories from the 1940's and later, Banner solves mysteries that are totally impossible, from the murder at a séance, when everyone in attendance is in straight jackets, to the killing of two men on a rowboat in the center of a still lake under the observation of Banner himself. Of the oversized, bibulous Banner, one can only say they don't make senators like that any more. Warning: you may not want to read these all at once.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

*Murder under glass
Fingerprint ghost
The spectre on the lake
*The Black Friar murders
*Ghost in the gallery
*Death by black magic
Murderer's progress
*Castanets, canaries, and murder
*The X Street murders
*Hangman's house
*The giant's sword
Stairway to nowhere (with Edward D. Hoch)
The vampire in the iron mask
*The whispering gallery
***
Bones for Davy Jones --2
The glass gravestone --2
Nobody loves a fat man
Serenade for a killer