Plot summary
Ross Harte, newspaperman and friend to The Great Merlini, has finally fallen in love—with Kathryn Wolff, daughter of irascible millionaire Dudley Wolff. Dudley decides to put huge obstacles in the path of Kathryn's romance, including disinheriting her. But most of his life is taken up with his investigations into the nature of death. To that end, he's filled his country estate with his second wife (a former medium), an experimental biologist, and a number of other odd characters. When a private detective decides to blackmail Wolff, he won't stand for it; he strikes the man, who falls to the floor dead. Wolff forces his hangers-on to help him bury the little man—who comes back to haunt Wolff, and forces him to call in The Great Merlini to explain the situation. Merlini has to explain a spirit photograph, a vase broken by ghostly means, Dudley's shooting, the identity of "Zareh Bey, the Man who Could Not Die", a murder by dry ice, why Ross should have been tied hand and foot and thrown into Long Island Sound, and where a professional medium can conceal a gun that no one else can. Finally Merlini works out the causes of the ghostly apparitions, identifies Dudley's murderer, and makes it possible for Harte and Kathryn to get married.
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder mysteries. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character, and these books were among the most popular American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. Under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, they also edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime. Dannay founded, and for many years edited, the crime fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961 onwards, Dannay and Lee commissioned other authors to write thrillers using the pseudonym Ellery Queen, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; some such novels were juvenile and were credited to Ellery Queen Jr. They also wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, which featured the detective Drury Lane.
Paul Charles Dominic Doherty is an English author, educator, lecturer and historian. He is also the Headmaster of Trinity Catholic High School in London, England. Doherty is a prolific writer, has produced dozens of historical novels and a number of nonfiction history books.
John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn.
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 minor 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."
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.
The Great Merlini is a fictional detective created by Clayton Rawson. He is a professional magician and amateur detective, who appears in four locked room or impossible crime novels written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as in a dozen short stories.
Brett Halliday is the primary pen name of Davis Dresser, an American mystery and western writer. Halliday is best known for the long-lived series of Michael Shayne mysteries he wrote, and later commissioned others to continue. Dresser also wrote westerns, non-series mysteries, and romances under the names Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Peter Field, and Anderson Wayne.
Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, an English crime writer and a cousin of actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson. She also wrote fiction and a 1940 autobiography, Three-a-Penny, as Anne Meredith.
Phoebe Atwood Taylor was an American writer of mystery novels, who was born and died in Boston. She graduated from Barnard College in 1930 and married surgeon Grantley Walder Taylor in December 1951.
Robert Sheldon Harte was an American Communist who worked as one of Leon Trotsky’s assistants and bodyguards in Coyoacán, Mexico. During the Stalinist attack against Trotsky’s household on May 24, 1940, Harte was abducted and later murdered by the Stalinist agents.
Necrophilia has been a topic in popular culture.
The Scream Team is a 2002 American comedy horror television film directed by Stuart Gillard from a story by Robert Short and Dan Berendsen, who also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Mark Rendall, Kat Dennings, Robert Bockstael, Eric Idle, Tommy Davidson, and Kathy Najimy and premiered on October 4, 2002, on Disney Channel as part of the network's series of original movies.
Richard Scott Prather was an American mystery novelist, best known for creating the "Shell Scott" series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms David Knight and Douglas Ring.
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is a 1964 Brazilian horror film directed and co-written by José Mojica Marins. Marins stars as Zé do Caixão, an undertaker who believes that he can achieve immortality by having a son, a concept he refers to as "the continuation of blood". The film marks the first appearance of the Coffin Joe character in media.
The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson.
The Headless Lady (1940) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by American writer 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.
Michael "Mike" Shayne is a fictional private detective character created during the late 1930s by writer Brett Halliday, a pseudonym of Davis Dresser. The character appeared in a series of seven films starring Lloyd Nolan for Twentieth Century Fox, five films from the low-budget Producers Releasing Corporation with Hugh Beaumont, a radio series under a variety of titles between 1944 and 1953, and later in 1960–1961 in a 32-episode NBC television series starring Richard Denning in the title role.
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. The film is based on a locked-room mystery novel by well-known mystery writer Clayton Rawson, Death from a Top Hat, which was the first to feature his series detective The Great Merlini. In this film, Merlini's character has been changed into Michael Morgan as portrayed by Robert Young. Don Diavolo, another series character in Rawson's work under his pseudonym, Stuart Towne, appears here as Dave Duvallo.
The Ghost and the Guest is a 1943 American black-and-white comedy-mystery film directed by William Nigh and starring James Dunn, Florence Rice, Robert Dudley, and Sam McDaniel. The plot finds a newlywed couple honeymooning in a house they think is haunted but which is really overrun by a gang of criminals trying to recover stolen loot. Based on an original story by American animator Milt Gross, the screenplay was the first film script by comedian Morey Amsterdam.
The Man Who Wouldn't Die is a 1942 mystery film directed by Herbert I. Leeds, starring Lloyd Nolan and Marjorie Weaver. This movie is the 5th of a series of seven of the Michael Shayne movies produced by Twentieth Century Fox between 1940 and 1942.
