Rocket to the Morgue

A locked-room mystery preoccupies Boucher’s brilliant clerical sleuth, Sister Ursula, in this stellar entry, first published in 1942, in the American Mystery Classics series. Lt. Terence Marshall of the LAPD asks for Ursula’s advice when an unusual rosary, with seven sets of beads, is found in the pants pocket of a homeless man who was shot through the heart in a rooming house, though the killer didn’t make off with the dead man’s cash. The rosary and a slip of paper with the phone number to a fancy apartment hotel hidden amid the money are the only clues. When Marshall visits the building, he meets Hilary Foulkes, who insists that someone has tried to kill him several times, most recently by sending a package of poisoned chocolates. Marshall learns from a woman employed by the delivery service that accepted the package that the sender was disguised as Dr. Derringer, the Professor Challenger–like hero created by Foulkes’s renowned sci-fi author father. Foulkes’s fears are realized when he’s fatally stabbed in a locked room. Along with his usual cleverness in playing fair, Boucher offers a witty satire of SF and fantasy authors of the era. (July)