Clayton Rawson was a real life magician, and he imbued his debut novel with seemingly every trick up his sleeve. The set up of Death from a Top Hat is an impossible crime lover’s dream – multiple locked room murders, a “no footprints in the snow” crime scene, and a suspect who vanishes into thin air. It’s no wonder that this book made position number seven on Ed Hoch’s famed 1981 list of top impossible crime novels.
We encounter the first puzzle – a locked room murder – within mere pages. A magician is found strangled to death inside his apartment, his body spread out over the form of a pentagram. Occult objects litter the room, but the real strangeness lies in how sealed down the crime scene is. Both doors to the apartment are locked and bolted from within. Scraps of handkerchief have been pushed into each keyhole – from the inside. A couch is pressed up tightly against one door. All windows are secured and show no sign of being tampered with.
Continue reading “Death from a Top Hat – Clayton Rawson (1938)”