Dragon's Cave

Devotees of the twisted impossible crime novels of John Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen will be delighted that Rue Morgue has published yet another long-out-of-print exploit of historian and amateur sleuth Lucius Theocritus Westborough (The Man from Tibet). Westborough is called upon by the official police, in the form of his longtime friend Chicago Lt. Johnny Mack, when Mack is stumped by the classic locked room murder of antique weapon collector Jonas Wright. Wright was found in his mansion's weapons room, the apparent victim of a deadly blow from a halberd, but there was no obvious way for his killer to escape the room while leaving the door and windows still bolted. The field of suspects include the dead man's three children, three men with designs on the daughter of the house, and a servant with a skeleton in her closet. The clues pointing to the real killer are concealed in plain sight, though more readers may anticipate the solution than in some of Clason's other books. The low-key Westborough is a nice contrast to more flamboyant detectives like Carr's Henry Merrivale, and his personality allows the puzzle, rather than its solver, to remain the focus of the book.