by Clayton Rawson
Clayton Rawson created the magician detective The Great Merlini in 1938. He first appeared in the novel Death From A Top Hat published in 1938.
The Performers
This first Great Merlini novel begins on a Monday evening. Ross Harte, ex-newspaper reporter, sits in his apartment, serenaded by the moans of the fog-horn from the nearby river that separates Manhattan from Long Island. He has a commission to write a magazine article on the state of the modern detective story. Little does he know that he’s about to be plunged into a real life case, a case so complicated and baffling that the police are almost willing to admit that a supernatural agency must be involved.
Harte has the good fortune to live in the same apartment building, better than that – on the same floor - as Dr. Cesare Sabbat. Dr. Cesare Sabbat, ‘tall, with Cassius’ lean and hungry look, eyes wet and shiny like an insects…he had an annoying habit of looking suspiciously back over his shoulder when I passed him in the hall tat reminded me of Count Dracula.’ Sabbat, who that very evening is found dead in his apartment. Strangled. Sabbat lies spread-eagled inside a pentagram drawn on the floor (with candles positioned at his feet, hands and head). The windows are locked. The doors are not only locked and bolted from the inside, but the keyholes are stuffed with torn squares of a handkerchief, also from the inside. How could the murderer have left such a room? Perhaps only supernaturally. For the chalked writing around the pentagram indicate that Sabbat was trying to summon a demon…’Come Surgat…Come Surgat…Come Surgat!’ Did he succeed all too well?
Harte finds it difficult to believe. So does Police Inspector Homer Gavigan and professional magician The Great Merlini, called in to assist on the case, due to the nature of the suspects. But even if they are able to discover that it was a human that killed Sabbat; if they can’t prove how it was done the killer will still escape. It could be the perfect murder.
The suspects are a colorful lot. Automatically suspect are the people who found the body – in addition to Harte (above suspicion) there are Colonel Herbert Watrous – the ‘foremost psychical scientist in America,’ Madame Rappourt – a spirit medium, and Eugene Tarot, otherwise known as ‘The Great Tarot,’ the Card King, a sleight-of-hand performer whose fame had garnered him theatrical bookings throughout America, and who also played the title role in a radio serial called Xanadu The Magician.
Although he is not in at the kill…discovery… David Duvallo, escape artist extraordinaire, must also be counted as a suspect, for he is the only man who could conceivably have escaped from Sabbat’s locked room…but would he have killed a man and made it seem like he was the only would who could possibly have done it? And why?
And there are other suspects. Alfred and Zelma LeClaire, a mind-reading act. Alfred is jealous of his wife and Sabbat…does he have reason to be? Judy Barclay? Could she have done it? Would she have done it? And is there a Yellow Peril here, in the shape of ventriloquist Ching Wong Fu (actually a Caucasian named MacNeill?)
Death From A Top Hat is a first class, fast moving puzzler, with another murder and more suspects along the way than you can shake a magic wand at. It’s only flaw is a flaw of the 1930s – the puzzle is the thing – there is precious little character development. As author Rawson has Harte write in his mystery story article: ‘The detective story is a unique literature form, a complicated species of jigsaw puzzle that is not so much written as constructed…’ One therefore must like the main characters (Harte and The Great Merlini) as is, and enjoy the milieu (psychics, psychic researchers, magicians, vaudeville performers) and enjoy solving puzzles in order to appreciate The Great Merlini’s debut detective performance.
The author of Death From A Top Hat, Clayton Rawson, was a friend of John Dickson Carr (the creator of Dr. Gideon Fell and the acknowledged expert on creating locked room mysteries), and one wonders how much assistance Carr gave Rawson in this, his first novel. (Or how much assistance Rawson gave Carr in his work!) Perhaps Rawson needed none at all, for he was an expert magician as well as a skilled writer, and with his magician’s knowledge of deception and misdirection, he was easily able to exploit the kinship between magic and murder.
Collector’s Corner:
The covers of the hardback books were pebbly white, with the titles imprinted in red, and the card suits (spade, club, diamond and heart) embossed on the front cover. The dust jackets were a bright red, and featured the large logo of a magician’s top hat, wand and white gloves in a circle, with the books title curving above it and Clayton Rawson’s name curving below. The back of each book jacket featured a photo of Clayton Rawson fanning a set of cards. Each book has an introduction written specially for the series.
For Death From A Top Hat, Walter B. Gibson (creator and writer of The Shadow) wrote a forward on the history of magical literature, and, in addition, stills from the 1938 movie based on the book, Miracles For Sale, directed by Tod Browning and starring Robert Young and Henry Hull, were included.
Ross Harte – free-lance writer
Inspector Homer Gavigan - police officer
The Great Merlini – professional magician
Dr. Cesare Sabbat - demonologist
Colonel Herbert Watrous – psychical scientist
Eugene Tarot, The Great Tarot – the Card King
Madame Rappourt – psychic medium
Don Duvallo – escape artist
Judy Barclay – magician’s assistant. Has she learned the tricks of the escapist’s trade?
Zelma LeClaire – mind reader
Alfred LeClaire – her husband and partner in the mind reading act
In 1979, Otto Penzler, editor of the Gregg Press Mystery series, published the four Merlini novels, and the Merlini short story collection, in a matching set. This was the first time the Merlini short stories had been published in a collection.
This review copyright June 12, 2000.
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