The Strange Message in the Parchment

Caveat lector

Oh man, that Lost Winner mentioned two weeks ago in the comments sounds amazing...

Last year, I discussed Murder Off Miami (1934), the first in the Crime Dossier series by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Link. These Crime Dossiers were not ordinary mystery novels, but instead presented the reader with a folder containing all the relevant documents and physical pieces of evidence regarding a crime that "really" happened. The story was solely told through hand-written letters, typed telegrams, newspaper clippings etc., while further clues were also provided in the form of photographs, pieces of hair and broken matches, all included physically inside the folder (so seperately printed telegrams, matches kept in little pockets etc.) At the end of the book, the reader would find a sealed section, in which the true solution to the crime was revealed. While one could argue that this was more gimmick than truly a game-changer for mystery fiction, I have to say I did like "playing" the first Crime Dossier. It reminded me of Escape Room games, where a story is told minimalistically through objects with which the player/reader can interact and that coupled with a Challenge to the Reader, made Murder Off Miami a unique experience, even if the fundamental mystery plot was fairly simple.

As these Crime Dossiers can be relatively expensive even on the used market, I wasn't planning to go after them, but a while back, I came across the second and third volumes in this series at a local used book store for a neat price, so I picked them up. Who Killed Robert Prentice? was released in 1937, followed by The Malinsay Massacre in 1938. In terms of presentation, both booklets don't differ too much from Murder Off Miami. The first book presented a rather classic closed circle situation, with a murder on a yacht out on sea, but Who Killed Robert Prentice? has a rather mundane crime in return. The titular Robert Prentice is a succesful businessman, who never had much luck with women until he met and fell in love with Cicely, a single mother with one boy. After their marriage, Cicely tried to get Robert into high society, but that also gave him more confidence, and to Cicely's great shock, he fell in love with his beautiful new secretary Suzanne L'Estrange. Hoping it would just be a whim, Cicely agreed to close her eyes for the affair for a short while so Robert could get it out of his system, but he was murdered before it was all over. One morning, Robert's body is found in a little cottage house he rented for his numerous rendezvous' with Miss L'Estrange. But it was not only Cicely who may have had a motive to kill her cheating husband: Cicely's son was also in love with Miss L'Estrange, so that love triangle could also be a motive. Cicely decides to write to Lieutenant Schwab, who is visiting the UK from the US and hopes he can solve the murder on Robert Prentice.

The core mystery plot is fairly simple, and follows a similar design to the first book. You'll be looking for contradictions between the narrative as you learn them from the various documents like personal letters (which may contain lies or not), newspaper articles and the physical evidence you also have, like photographs. Sometimes things said, don't comply with what you see in the photographs, and that's the starting point for your deductions, though as I said, the core plot is ultimately quite simple, so after you pick up on a few discrepencies, you'll quickly have an idea of what really happened. This second volume has some interesting pieces of evidence: there's a torn-up photograph, a train ticket stub and even a complete newspaper, which includes updates on the police investigation and the coroner's court. Going through all these things as you try to solve the mystery is still fun, and like Murder Off Miami, Who Killed Robert Prentice? can provide for an evening of detecting fun. Personally, I liked Murder Off Miami better as a story though.

The Malinsay Massacre has a promising title, but the reader will also quickly notice that this volume is less intricately designed compared to the first two Crime Dossiers. I assume there's a financial reason for this, but the change can also be detected in the narrative. The Malinsay Massacre refers to a series of murders that occured in 1899 and is not a case where Lieutenant Schwab has personally worked on as a police officer. The murders started with the death of the fifth Earl of Malinsay, Malinsay being a small island in Scotland housing Malinsay Castle, a small village of fishermen and some cottage that can be rented. George Malinsay's death had been odd, but further examination proved he had indeed been murdered. He had inhaled a poisonous gas, but strangely enough, it seems impossible anyone could've gone in his bedroom to make him inhale the gas that night, making it a locked room mystery. After George's death, his brother Henry became the next Earl, who is determined to find out who killed George. He not only has his own son come to the island, but he also writes to his nephew Colin, the brains of the family, hoping he might act as their armchair detective. For death seems to be lurking still on the island. Soon after Henry settles on the island, more of his family is murdered, resulting in a massacre of the Malinsay family. The case would remain unsolved, but when Schwab gains access to the old documents of the Malinsay family, he realizes that the murderer had been hiding in plain sight all along.

The Malinsay Massacre has less 'gimmicky stuff' than the previous two volumes. Most of the files includes are just type-written letters, accompanied by 'paper-based' evidence like the Malinsay family tree, a floorplan and a few photographs of the suspects. The only physical piece of evidence is a tablet laced with arsenic, with the helpful note Note to readers: The poison has been extracted from this tablet, in case you were planning to use the poison tablet you got with a book to murder someone. I liked how we got a completely different type of story this time, with a whole family being killed off on some remote island, but focusing solely on the core plot, it does disappoint at times. The locked room murder is not really clever, as there's basically no evidence to what happened and the story is basically just saying "what if you imagine this or that was there, then the murder would've been possible!" Yes, of course, but it's not a proper detective story if you don't properly hint or foreshadow that. The clewing to the solution of a mystery story should never be a digital manner of 1) Either you think of The One Solution or 2) You don't think of the One Solution. It should be clewed, there should be build-up, there should be hinting. I also didn't like how some of the hints to the identity of the murderer were supposed to be visible on the photographs, only not really due to the resolution of said photographs. Obviously, I understand that it's also a matter of the technology at the time of publishing and the previous books had similar issues too, but I think it's a bit more troublesome in this case, as The Malinsay Massacre's hinting is both not as extensive, as well as not as good as the other two books, so it really hurts the narrative when a clue turns out to be barely discernable.

On the whole, I'd say these two volumes share the same basic issues I also had with Murder Off Miami, being that the story can be really dry as there's no narrative voice, no characterization or quotable prose. The cheap paper and enigmatic way in which these books are bound are understandable, considering the contents, but when asked the question of whether these stories couldn't have been written as normal prose stories, I'd say it wouldn't be too hard to change a few clues to make that possible. So the necessity of these Crime Dossiers is definitely a possible topic of discussion. They are fun, gimmicky forms of mystery fiction, but not much more than that. In case you hadn't read the review of Murder Off Miami yet, please do. The three volumes are quite similar, so most of what I wrote there will apply here.

There is a fourth volume titled Herewith the Clues, but again, I am not actively chasing after it unless I happen to find one cheap. While funny anecdotes in the annals of mystery fiction, mystery games and interactive fiction, I don't think these Crime Dossiers are something you should pursue at all costs. If you can find them cheap though, try one out, as they provide an entertaining experience that shows off the possibilities of mystery fiction. If I had to choose one, I still think the first, Murder Off Miami, is the best. Who Killed Robert Prentice? is fairly similar to Murder Off Miami, so if you want to choose two, I'd say The Malinsay Massacre would prove to be the more interesting companion pick, as it's quite different in atmosphere due to the setting.