Clayton Rawson
Author
Series
Merlini's mastery of misdirection enables him to assist his friend with the NYPD Insp. Homer Gavigan who has two bizarre murder cases to solve. In one anthropologist Cesare Sabbat was found on a pentagram in a locked room all of whose keyholes were stuffed with cloth on the inside. Around the pentagram were written the names of various deities and demons including that of Surgat "who opens all locks." The second case is quite similar. Rawson bends over backward to play fair with the reader. He not only leaves relevant clues in plain sight but at the start focuses the reader's attention on the essential questions "what it was that all suspects had in common" and "what the two things were that one of them was able to do that no one else could possibly have done."
Great Merlini
Thorndike Press large print mystery
Otto Penzler's classic American mystery library
More Series...
Great Merlini
Thorndike Press large print mystery
Otto Penzler's classic American mystery library
More Series...
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Now retired from the tour circuit on which he made his name, master magician The Great Merlini spends his days running a magic shop in New York's Times Square and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. The cops call him when faced with crimes so impossible that they can only be comprehended by a magician's mind. In the most recent case, two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing...
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
"Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the form. For devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period's purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars, the...
Search Tools Get RSS Feed Email this Search