For those who dabble in the impossible crime genre, Clayton Rawson is known name. His debut novel, Death From a Top Hat, is commonly positioned as a top ten, if not top five, impossible crime novel (which is deserving in the setup, but lacking in the full execution). It’s surprising then, that his second novel, The Footprints on the Ceiling, with a title born from the impossible circumstances of… wait for it… footprints on a ceiling, doesn’t actually feature an impossible crime.
Rest assured, there’s tons of gimmicks and feints to dazzle the reader, but given the book’s reputation, there oddly isn’t an actual impossibility. Yes, at one point there is the question of why there are marks from soiled shoes walking a line across a crime scene ceiling, but to paraphrase one character, someone could have just stood on a ladder and made the marks. The circumstances of the crime scene – a woman found poisoned on the top floor of an abandoned (and haunted – we’ll get to that) house – adequately allow for such luxuries.
Continue reading “The Footprints on the Ceiling – Clayton Rawson (1939)”