A Tiki Scare is no Fair

"And now for our next number. An original based on an ancient Voodoo chant: Mamba Wamba!"

"Mamba Wamba and the Voodoo Hoodoo"

Live and Let Die is one of those James Bond movies that were always shown on television back when I was a child, so I've seen the film sooooo often and I always think of it when I hear the word Voodoo. Also: watch Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated! It's really good.

Theodore Roscoe's Murder on the Way! (1935) starts in the studio of our narrator Cartershall, who is working on a painting of his girlfriend Pete (Patricia). The two are suddenly visited by the solicitor Maître Pierre Valentin Bonjean Tousellines - Comte de Limonade, who informs Pete that her relative Uncle Eli recently passed away. Uncle Eli was Pete's guardian after her father's death, but his nasty character drove Pete away and Eli later moved to his chateau Morne Noir in Haiti. Because Pete is one of the persons named in the will, and the will specifies that prospect beneficiaries need to be present at the reading after the funeral, she and Cartershal make haste to Haiti to bring their final respects to Uncle Eli. Eli Proudfoot was found with a bullet in his head at his estate, but despite the swift arrival of both Eli's doctor and Maître Tousellines at the scene, no culprit nor weapon was found. While the Garde d'Haiti assumes suicide, some locals fear Eli's death was a murder committed by good ol' Voodoo zombies. The belief in the local voodoo traditions is so strong, that Eli had arranged for a stake to be driven through his coffin at his funeral, to make sure he would not be brought back a zombie. Upon arrival at Morne Noir, Pete and Cartershall meet the other people named in the will, a colorful, but highly unsavory lot who would've fitted perfectly in the Moss Eisley cantina. At the reading, they learn that all these people have been put on a numbered list. The highest-ranking person on this list will enherit the whole estate twenty-four hours after the funeral, provided that this person has remained on Morne Noir all that time. With Pete ranked last on the list, it's clear she'll have no chance of inheriting anything, but the people have hardly retreated to the chateau when one of the party is killed, and a lot more deaths follow in the next twenty-four hours...

When I think of mystery stories that revolve around last testaments with complex conditions that become the motive for a murder case, I always think of Yokomizo Seishi's work, like for example Inugamike no Ichizoku. Wills that seem to be written exactly so every potential heir will have a darn good reason to kill the others off. Funnily enough, I still remember the first time I encountered this trope in mystery fiction, back when I was a child. The Scooby Doo, Where Are You? episode A Night of Fright is No Delight (1970) has a similar plot, where Scooby-Doo is named one of the heirs of Colonel Beauregard Sanders, but the heirs will only inherit if they stay the night at the haunted mansion. People weren't killed in that episode of course, but the Phantom Shadow did target the rival heirs one by one like you'd expect.

I thought a lot about Scooby Doo! while I was reading Murder on the Way, because I think this novel is really chaotic and fast-paced. It feels exactly like a Scooby Doo! cartoon, always rushing, with something happening every few seconds even if it doesn't always make sense. Once the first murder is committed, the story doesn't stop even once. The bodies don't even have time to cool off, as people are murdered one after another in rapid succession. Some of them 'just' with a good ol' pistol shot, others in more fancy manners like err, what happened in the billiards room. It's very silly actually, as we also find Lieutenant Nemo Narcisse and his men of the Garde d'Haiti at Morne Noir right from the start. Despite the presence of these 'guards' in the house though and their constant ordering around of the remaining heirs, people keep on getting murdered and most of the time, it's just because the guard left their post and the murderer quickly did the deed. Which is ricidulous. There are a few murders which are a bit more interesting, like a dissappearing person from a cramped subterranean corridor and a locked room murder where a man was shot in the head and a fire was started, even though the corridor door was guarded and the door to the connecting room sealed with planks. This locked room murder is pretty simple though and the story fails on actually selling the impossibility: very early on in the story, it is revealed there are in fact hidden passages in the chateau Morne Noir, but because of the breakneck pace of the story, there's little time to consider each death to the fullest. The possibility of the existence of a hidden passage is hardly considered by the time we get to the locked room murder, which undermines the whole mystery because it's already been established it's perfectly possible there's just some hidden door somewhere. The story also tries to sell the mystery of how the dangerous rival heirs constantly manage to get their hands on loaded weapons to threaten the others with, but if you've already established there are hidden panels in this house earlier, the narrative should at least go over the possibility weapons are kept in such hidden spaces. Murder on the Way! is clearly written as a suspenseful pulp thriller and it works perfectly as such (cliffhanger after cliffhanger after cliffhanger), but if the various mysteries are supposed to be elements used to convey the creepy atmosphere to the reader, then these mysteries should also be considered in more detail, because now I kept on thinking 'Yes, but you hardly talked about this or that possibility despite earlier events, so I don't really see what's so baffling about the situation given the (few) details we've been given at this point.' I doubt anyone will have any real trouble figuring out who the murderer is though, as long as you don't let yourself be distracted by the speed at which the plot is running.

The use of voodoo and zombies as a theme in this novel was also a bit disappointing. Early on, the use of voodoo as a theme is awkward: for example it's said that some people think that Uncle Eli was killed by a zombie because there was no pistol found at the crime scene.... which doesn't make any sense as a logical line of reasoning (no pistol does not equal zombie). The mystery revolves completely about the absence of a pistol, but there's nothing that even remotely ties this to the local belief of zombies, yet the narrative pretends like this makes absolute sense. Zombies are mentioned a few more times later on, but most of the time, it's used more like a magic phrase which is supposed to strike fear in the reader, rather than making narrative sense. It's pulp of course, and perhaps I shouldn't have expected too much of it, but interestingly enough, all the mysteries I've reviewed on this blog involving zombies have been so much more entertaining and or informative. Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers (novelization of the same-titled videogame) is more a horror-mystery, but explores the theme of Voodoo both in the sense of authentic ancient African religions as well as the New Orleans kind in a far more gripping manner. Yamaguchi Masaya's masterpiece Death of the Living Dead is technically not about the Voodoo-kind of zombies, but about the living dead (murdered punk becomes the living dead and tries to solve his own murder while hiding the fact he's a walking corpse) and is an excellent example of how to truly incorporate the theme of the living dead with the fair play mystery, as it features an ingenious puzzle plot making full use of the supernatural premise. The same holds for Imamura Masahiro's Shijinsou no Satsujin, which is the zombie-themed mystery novel all others need to be compared to (or movies!). The story about a series of murders going on in a hotel during a zombie outbreak is fantastic, merging the movie trope of hordes of brainless zombies with the crafty puzzle plots and logic-based deductions of the Queen school. With Murder on the Way!, voodoo and zombies are more like window dressing, like in a Scooby Doo! episode where you may have a specific ghost, but practically speaking it could have been any ghost with any appearance. It's only near the end when the zombie theme becomes more prominent, but even then it's used in rather predictable ways.

Oh, and a small note about Roscoe's writing style. His prose is entertaining to read, but the racist tone is hard to ignore if you read it as a modern reader. Some of it may be the mores of the time, some of it may simply be Roscoe himself. Most characters are reduced to single-point caricatures in general (the German is the "Nazi"), but the tone is especially noticable when Roscoe's describing the black population of Haiti. Murder on the Way! is definitely a product of its time. 

Murder on the Way! can be an amusing read though, despite all I've written above. It's a pulpy mystery thriller that tries to keep you on your toes from start to finish, features a unique setting with its zombie-fearing Haiti and the plot also features a few alluring murders and other impossible situations. But you really need to switch your mind off and just enjoy the ride, for if you pause even once, you'll start to realize there's also a lot that raises question marks in your head. I'll also admit that I had hoped that this novel would be something it never intended to be: a fair play puzzle plot mystery that actually made good use of the theme of voodoo and/or zombies, a story which would really incorporate supernatural "zombies" as a vital element to be considered in the logical reasoning necessary to solve the murders. I may be spoiled in that respect, because the titles I mentioned earlier are truly masterpieces of the genre that showcase how zombies as the supernatural can work perfectly in a well-plotted fair play mystery, while Murder on the Way! obviously only intended to use Voodoo/zombies as a horror element. If you're just looking for a very active and busy mystery story, Murder on the Way! is a safe choice, but I can't help but feel there's wasted potential here.