Locked Room Library #2: RIM OF THE PIT (1944)

“You dabble in mysteries you are not able to comprehend, like a child playing on the rim of a volcano. Imbecile, like the child, to think that which lies dormant cannot engulf you.”

Since I started (and fell off) my blogging chronicle of the 99 Novels for a Locked Room Library, there has been an entire effort to create a new list with over 500 novels. Very cool! I’ll stick to blogging about the original ones for now, but looking forward to that project.

Today’s entry is Rim of the Pit, a horror-themed mystery where the culprit may or may not be that ghost with the ugly mug on the cover. The edition I read was actually this one, which instead shows a cozy mountain cabin with a subtle nod to the impossible crime.

The Locked Room:

Rather than a single impossibility, Rim of the Pit is packed full of magic tricks, phony séances, and two fantastical murders which, frankly, each could have supported a book. Although the séance that kicks off the novel is fake, the protagonists have strong reason to suspect that the ghost is very real, menacing them through possessing one of their number and imbuing them with the dead man’s grudges, a lust for blood, and the power of flight.

Locked Room #1: A “ghost” manifests at a séance, then seemingly flees to the upper landing. Despite the group covering all exits and cordoning him in a room, when the door is opened, the ghost has vanished.

This setup strongly reminded me of the iconic, baffling disappearance in The Yellow Room, to the point that I wonder if it was an intentional nod. The solution there would point to our protagonist as the ghost, however, and it’s clear from his viewpoint that this couldn’t be the case.

Locked Room #2: The detectives enter a woman’s room moments after she was bludgeoned to death, but neither the culprit nor the weapon can be found. Footprints lead out from the broken window, only to stop abruptly, as if the killer took flight.

Again, this is reminiscent of another locked room novel, this time The Hollow Man (a.k.a. The Three Coffins) by John Dickson Carr. Considering that the dead man’s name was Grimaud, I’m certain that this one is a wink at the genre, and again, the tracks (and method of murder) make it clear that the trick could not possibly be the one used here.

There’s another impossible murder involving a marked bullet and a body seen flying across a field of unblemished snow. Vaguely reminiscent of The White Priory Murders, but this one was its own thing, as far as I could tell.

The Story:

10/10 for atmosphere (the novel keeps you on your toes, as while there are a couple of obvious suspects, means and motive line up with no one except the ghost), but oof. This was a bit of a rough read, as far as “old novel cultural dissonance” goes.

Though interestingly enough, the biggest cultural issue with the novel is not one that I would attribute to the era it was written in. The demonic entity believed to be responsible for Rim of the Pit‘s impossible events is the Wendigo (sometimes ‘Windigo’, as here), a figure in Algonquian spirituality often depicted as a humanoid giant, which is associated with freezing to death, starvation, and sometimes cannibalism. But the concept continues to be adapted and appropriated in many modern horror works: Pet Semetary (1983), Until Dawn (2015), Hannibal (2013-2015), Supernatural (in a 2005 episode), off the top of my head.

Now, like some of those other examples, the “Wendigo” here does not bear a lot of resemblance to the myth. A blood-sucking monster spread through contagion, which can be killed by silver bullets—so, vampires but it’s cold out. When I was looking the book up, my first thought was: sheesh, couldn’t they have just used a werewolf? But having read it, I would argue that colonial power dynamics between whites and First Nations/Native Americans are central to Rim of the Pit’s subtext—”that which lies dormant” here has an awful lot to do with ownership and discomfort over untameable American land.

In his essay ‘The Horror! The Horror?’, genre theorist Joe Nazare compares and contrasts the ways that the Wendigo is employed in fiction by white and Native American authors. Regarding ‘The Wendigo’ (1910) by Algernon Blackwood, probably the establishing example of a white author drawing on the myth, Nazare argues that “Blackwood’s rhetoric slyly equates [Native American character] Punk with the fiendish Wendigo” through traits such as dirtiness, furtiveness, and the ability to navigate the winter woods [1]. The same principle is fully on display in Rim of the Pit. The first person to bring up the Wendigo is the group’s Métis guide, described repeatedly as speaking “mongrel French”. He is the only person who can comfortably navigate the snowy forest, a trait that otherizes and renders him sinister.

In fact, the entire background of the novel’s plot is a land dispute over a stretch of forest whose title belonged to the dead man, and now belongs to his wife, but is coveted for logging by her new husband and his business partner. Although the exact location isn’t specified, one could imagine that this squabble which motivates the murders, much like Pet Semetary, is taking place on unceded Mi’kmaq territory.

On a more humorous note, protagonist/detective Rogan Kincaid is constantly described by the epithet “the gambler”, which at least in this novel is a completely informed trait. The other characters are constantly talking about how cool and sexy he is. ‘My hands are registered as lethal weapons’ type of guy, which cracked me up.

Solution Satisfaction Rating:

While it didn’t give me that “Wow!” factor of some locked room reveals, I found the puzzle element impressive in just how much was packed into a single book. Rim of the Pit hits that balance of “utterly baffling scenario” and “simple solution”—three times, no less! I had a reasonable guess about the “who”, but I was in the dark on the “how” and “why” for a long time. On top of that, there is the oft-neglected problem of why someone would create the locked room at all, and the novel does not forget to explain this. The ending did convince me that it was rational for them to Do All That.

The one element that remained confusing was (ROT 13 for spoilers): Gur snpg gung Fureel urneq ure sngure’f ibvpr bhg ba gur evire. Fur jnf jvgu gur “phycevg” ng gur gvzr, juvpu jnf na rneyl cbvag gung znqr zr fhfcrpg uvz—vg jbhyq unir orra rnfl sbe uvz gb guebj uvf ibvpr. Fgvyy, V’z abg npghnyyl pyrne vs ur unq guvf fxvyy, be jung ernfba ur unq sbe qbvat fb. Frggvat gur nzovrapr?

[1] Nazare, Joe (2000). “The Horror! The Horror? The Appropriation, and Reclamation, of Native American Mythology”. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 11 (1 (41)). A slightly edited version of the essay can also be read for free on Nazare’s blog.