No Crime Is Impossible for THE GREAT MERLINI (1979)

Originally posted April 23, 2024. 

The 8 Mansion Murders, which I read recently, had a reference to Clayton Rawson’s short story ‘Off the Face of the Earth’. I’d already read it a couple years back, but gave the whole collection The Great Merlini: The Complete Stories of the Magician Detective a re-read to refresh myself. In a formula that would later be used by Jonathan Creek, Merlini is a stage magician and proprietor of a magic shop (inspired by Rawson’s real-life performance under the same stage name), who uses his expertise in “impossible” tricks, misdirection, and occasionally cold-reading to crack various cases that baffle the police. It’s a quick and amusing read.

As you might imagine from the premise and length (with some as short as four pages), these stories are pure puzzles, often focused on identifying the crucial clue that allowed Merlini to work out what happened, like an Encyclopedia Brown for adults. Indeed, some of the stories were originally presented in two parts in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, challenging readers to submit their solutions at the point that Merlini has solved the case. The window dressing is extremely 1940s, with snappy dialogue and the kinds of bantering characters who call a beautiful woman a “dish”. The narration (sometimes conveyed through Merlini’s occasional Watson Ross Harte) is equally quite humorous:

Ten minutes later Doran and Merlini entered the sixty-fourth floor offices of the Hi-Fly Rod & Reel Company. The reception room was like a thousand others except that its decor was extremely fishy. On one wall hung a stuffed, mounted, five-foot marlin. This somewhat incredible specimen of the taxidermist’s art seemed to have just leapt from the briny deep and now, back arched, mouth open hungrily, and with a mean look in its glassy eyes, was diving with murderous intent down at Gavigan who stood just below. Gavigan’s eyes also had a glassy look.

Merlini faces off against phony psychics, lie detectors, card sharps, and other magician pretenders. The mystery tricks themselves are clever, if sometimes understandably bare-boned. The aforementioned ‘Off the Face of the Earth’ has a corrupt judge disappear from a telephone booth in full view of two police officers (perhaps inspired by the real-life disappearance of Judge Joe Crater). I have to agree with The 8 Mansion Murders‘ Shinji that one element of the solution is a little tough to swallow, but it satisfies the prompt, and makes interesting use of a faux-psychic stooge—similar to The Reader Is Warned, but without the element of extreme racist caricature that made that book borderline unreadable. ‘Nothing Is Impossible’ has a locked-room murder blamed on little green men. ‘Out of This World’ involves a locked room completely sealed with tape, which I believe was also, like the telephone booth, written in response to a challenge by John Dickson Carr. Detective Conan once copied the trick (in a slightly more plausible way than presented here, in my opinion). I think my favourite story had to be ‘Miracles — All in the Day’s Work’, with its audaciously simple bit of misdirection at a company that sells fishing line (what else?).

Rereading the book, I feel like I need to give Rawson more of a fair shake. The only novel of his I’ve read is Death from a Top Hat, in the middle of a string of “best locked room mysteries” that I read back-to-back in a fugue state. They’re not earth-shattering, but they are a fairer form of fair play than some of their peers, and make for delightful reading.