Death from a Top Hat

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Death From a Top Hat

Rawson1b.jpg

The 1945 Dell Edition, mapback No. 69
Author Clayton Rawson
Country United States
Language English
Series The Great Merlini
Genre Mystery novels
Publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date
 1938
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 240 pp (in Dell edition shown)
Followed by The Footprints on the Ceiling

Death from a Top Hat (1938) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. It is the first of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist.[ citation needed ]

Novel narrative text, normally of a substantial length and in the form of prose describing a fictional and sequential story

A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, normally written in prose form, and which is typically published as a book.

Clayton Rawson was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a professional magician who runs a shop selling magic supplies. He also wrote four short stories in 1940 about a stage magician named Don Diavolo, who appears as a principal character in one of the novels featuring The Great Merlini. "Don Diavolo is a magician who perfects his tricks in a Greenwich Village basement where he is frequently visited by the harried Inspector Church of Homicide, either to arrest the Don for an impossible crime or to ask him to solve it."

The Great Merlini is a fictional detective created by Clayton Rawson. He is a professional magician who appears in four locked room or impossible crime novels written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as in a few short stories.

Contents

In a poll of 17 detective story writers and reviewers, this novel was voted as the seventh best locked room mystery of all time. [1]

Plot summary

"As the story opens, free-lance writer Ross Harte is writing a magazine article on the modern detective story, and most of this article-to-be is included in the first chapter." [2]

When a magician is found dead inside his locked and (thoroughly) sealed apartment, the police call in Merlini to help explain the impossible, "perhaps on the theory that it takes a magician to catch one." [2] All the suspects, however, are accustomed to producing the impossible. They include a professional medium, an escape artist, a couple of magicians, a ventriloquist, and two people who claim to exhibit mental telepathy in their nightclub act.

The first murder victim is found spread-eagled inside a pentagram, surrounded by the trappings of black magic. The second victim, also spread-eagled, seems to have been in two places at once during the first murder. After a number of breakneck chases from one scene to the next, Merlini and his assistant are a couple of steps ahead of the police and provide a far-fetched but logical solution to the impossible crimes.

In between, Merlini and other characters deliver great chunks of informative conversation mixed with paragraphs of information about entirely unrelated but fascinating topics, like yogic bilocation, making the keys of a typewriter move without touching them, and even posing a tricky problem in geometry. The action also stops for a while when Merlini quotes a well-known passage from John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins about the nature of locked-room mystery novels, and adds some flourishes of his own in relation to the problems at hand.

Bilocation, or sometimes multilocation, is an alleged psychic or miraculous ability wherein an individual or object is located in two distinct places at the same time.

John Dickson Carr novelist, short story writer, playwright

John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.

The penultimate scene in which the murderer is revealed is enlivened by one of the suspects attempting (on stage) to catch a bullet in his teeth, and all is explained in the final chapter when everyone gathers at Merlini's Magic Shop in the best whodunnit tradition.

Film adaptation

The book was adapted for the film Miracles for Sale (1939) starring Robert Young and directed by Tod Browning, whose last film it was. The film simplifies the complex plot and replaces the character of Merlini with "The Great Morgan" (Mike), played by Young.

Related Research Articles

Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—either professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.

A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the clues from which the identity of the perpetrator may be deduced before the story provides the revelation itself at its climax. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric, amateur, or semi-professional detective. This narrative development has been seen as a form of comedy in which order is restored to a threatened social calm.

Crime fiction genre of fiction focusing on crime

Crime fiction is a literary genre that fictionalises crimes, their detection, criminals, and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including detective fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the court room. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.

The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a subgenre of detective fiction in which a crime is committed in circumstances under which it was seemingly impossible for the perpetrator to commit the crime or evade detection in the course of getting in and out of the crime scene. The crime in question typically involves a crime scene with no indication as to how the intruder could have entered or left for example a locked room. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.

Crime is a typically 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century genre, dominated by British and American writers. This article explores its historical development as a genre.

<i>The Mystery of the Yellow Room</i> novel by Gaston Leroux

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is a mystery novel written by French author Gaston Leroux. One of the first locked-room mystery novels, it was first published serially in France in the periodical L'Illustration from September 1907 to November 1907, then in its own right in 1908.

Gideon Fell

Dr Gideon Fell is a fictional character created by John Dickson Carr. He is the protagonist of 23 mystery novels from 1933 through 1967, as well as a few short stories. Carr was an American who lived most of his adult life in England; Dr. Fell is an Englishman who lives in the London suburbs.

<i>Hercule Poirots Christmas</i> book

Hercule Poirot's Christmas is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 19 December 1938. It retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).

An inverted detective story, also known as a "howcatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery. There may also be subsidiary puzzles, such as why the crime was committed, and they are explained or resolved during the story. This format is the opposite of the more typical "whodunit", where all of the details of the perpetrator of the crime are not revealed until the story's climax.

<i>The Emperors Snuff-Box</i> book by John Dickson Carr

The Emperor's Snuff-Box is a non-series mystery novel (1942) by mystery novelist John Dickson Carr. The detective is psychologist Dr. Dermot Kinross.

<i>The Dutch Shoe Mystery</i> novel by Ellery Queen

The Dutch Shoe Mystery is a novel which was written in 1931 by Ellery Queen. It is the third of the Ellery Queen mysteries.

<i>The Chinese Orange Mystery</i> novel by Ellery Queen

The Chinese Orange Mystery is a novel that was written in 1934 by Ellery Queen. It is the eighth of the Ellery Queen mysteries.

Joseph Commings was an American writer of locked room mysteries. He wrote a series of soft-core sex novels, but is best known for his locked-room mystery/impossible crime short stories featuring Senator Brooks U. Banner."

The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson.

<i>The Headless Lady</i> novel by Clayton Rawson

The Headless Lady (1940) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. A character in the novel, a detective story writer named Stuart Towne, has the same name as a pen name of Rawson. This is the third of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist.

<i>No Coffin for the Corpse</i> novel by Clayton Rawson

No Coffin for the Corpse (1942) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson.

<i>Miracles for Sale</i> 1939 film by Tod Browning

Miracles for Sale is a 1939 American mystery film directed by Tod Browning, and starring Robert Young and Florence Rice. It was Browning's final film as a director.

References

  1. ↑ "Ranking of Impossible Crimes by Experts". MysteryFile.com.
  2. 1 2 Roseman, Mill et al.Detectionary. New York: Overlook Press, 1971. ISBN   0-87951-041-2


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