The Wrong Track

すべて何かのイチブってことに 僕らは気づかない 

「イチブトゼンブ」（ B'z）

We don't realize that

Everything is part of something

"Some & All" (B'z)

And another Great Merlini review this year.

It didn't take much to convince overworked promotion writer Ross Harte to forget about the newest rewrite for a moment to join retired-magician-turned-amateur-detective The Great Merlini in a new adventure. The Great Merlini is doing a new show on haunted houses, and one of the top locations eyed by Merlini is a haunted house located on Skelton Island in New York's East River. Skelton Island is owned by wealthy Linda Skelton, who lives on the island with her two half-brothers and other guests, including the psychic Madame Rappourt. Colonel Watrous was a true believer of Madame Rappourt's spiritual powers in the past, but as of late, doubts have crawled into his mind, and he wants Merlini to see if he can debunk her. He secretly invites Merlini to Skelton Island, so he can witness one of Rappourt's seances, but while they are sneaking on the island, Merlini, Watrous and Harte notice that something's fishy in the supposed haunted house. Inside, they hear suspicious footprints on the floor above and chasing after them, they find the body of Linda Skelton inside a room, who died of poison. While at first sight, this might look like suicide, the fact that Linda suffered from severe agorophobia, would've made it impossible for her to leave the comforts of her own house to come here. While they are checking the scene, the three discover more curious facts: footprints walking on the ceiling leading to the one open window, and a fire is started on the ground floor of the building. When the people on the island are informed of Linda's death, they also find that the phone line's been cut and that all the boats have been let loose, stranding the people on the island. It takes the magician's brain of Merlini to see the connection between all these events in Clayton Rawson's The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939).

The Footprints on the Ceiling is the second novel in Rawson's The Great Merlini series (followed by The Headless Lady, which I reviewed a couple months ago). I haven't read the first novel (Death from a Top Hat), though I vaguely remember having seen the film once. I am not completely sure, but I believe both Madame Rappourt and Colonel Watrous appeared in that first novel, with Watrous (a believer in the occult) now having doubts about Rappourt's true powers. Anyway, reading these novels out of order doesn't really hurt the experience, in case you were wondering.

What does hurt the experience is that The Footprints on the Ceiling is an incredibly packed mystery novel, with far too many subplots and ideas for its own good. The result is a chaotic, meandering bunch of ideas, that lacks focus and meaningful plotting. Last year, I reviewed a few mystery stories that in my eyes, were pinnacles in mystery plotting in terms of synergy: the novel Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono, but also the Detective Conan episode Koureikai W Misshitsu Jiken were both packed stories, with lots of sub-plots and events, but what made these stories so memorable, was the fact there was synergy going between all these events. Nothing there happened on its own: each story element was there to strengthen and support other elements in multi-lateral directions, with for example murder methods, murder scenes, motives and sub-plots all interconnected in meaningful ways, where it was impossible to remove one element without affecting the fundamentals of the whole mystery plot. The Footprints on the Ceiling is an excellent example of what happens when you have a mystery plot that lacks such synergy, where elements are thrown in haphazardly without true consideration of how and why it all ties together and most importantly: whether the inclusion of such elements really improve the overall plot.

When you're reading The Footprints on the Ceiling, you are presented with, amongst others, 1) a backstory of a haunted house on Skelton Island; 2) a semi-locked room where Merlini, Harte and Watrous hear footprints in a room, but don't find the person behind them; 3) the mystery of why Linda Skelton is dead, in a room where she wouldn't have gone; 4) the mystery of the footprints on the ceiling; 5) the question of whether Madame Rappourt is a genuine psychic; 6) the mystery of who cut the phone line; 7) the mystery of who set the boats drifting; 8) the mystery of an unknown, naked man being found in a New York hotel who died of the bends (decompression sickness); 9) the mystery of missing half-brother Floyd; 10) the mystery of who's been dusting for fingerprints besides the police; 11) the search for a lost pirate treasure; and so much more. And the things: a lot of the elements are just there to make this a longer novel. Everyone has something to hide, with lots of subplots going on, but they usually have no direct connection with the main mystery. They are just there to act as a semi-red herring, to focus the spotlight on something else for a moment only to tell you 'sure, this all happened but it had nothing to do with the murder!' and then the spotlight moves again to someone else. One could say this is misdirection, but throwing a mountain of random things to obscure the underlying picture is the crudest manner to do misdirection and hardly a skill.

There are interesting ideas going in The Footprints on the Ceiling, mind you, but the execution isn't always optimal. Inspector Gavigan also works on a case of a naked body being found in a hotel room who died of the bends (decompression sickness): this is actually a pretty interesting situation on its own, but this problem is hardly given enough page-time to really settle, and this part is solved far too fast, and is soon forgotten among the plethora of other things going on in this novel. The main motive for the murder is also fairly interesting, but again, it's only "well-hidden" because everything and the kitchen sink is thrown in this story and it's more chore to sift through all the random ideas and happenings than actual fun.

After reading The Footprints on the Ceiling, I read through a few reviews which were far more positive about this book than I am, so your mileage may very well vary on this, but I thought this book a good example of the easy way out of writing a lengthy mystery story: by stuffing it with sub-plots that don't really connect in a meaningful way to the core mystery plot, by adding elements that are only there so the author can say "Haha, made you look." The book is not devoid of good ideas: but there is no synergy going on between these ideas at all, resulting in what can only be described as a random collection of ideas that never come together.