This 1935 Crime Club collection was reprinted by Dover Publications in 1977.
About the author: Charles Daly King (1895-1963) was an American psychologist. In the 1930s he wrote seven detective novels in addition to this book of short stories. Here, the series character, Trevis Tarrant, appears along with his Watson-narrator Jerry Phelan. In his other works, the series detective is Michael Lord of New York; whose cases are recounted by Watson-narrator Dr L Rees Pons. (excerpt from Goodreads)
Major characters:
- Trevis Tarrant, solver of mysteries
- Jerry Phelan, 'Watson-narrator'
- Valerie (Mopish) Phelan, Jerry's wife
- Katoh, Tarrant's Japanese butler-valet
Synopses:
The Episode of the Codex' Curse (New York City): Our narrator Jerry Phelan winds up, against his better judgment, spending the night locked in a basement strongroom of New York's Metropolitan Museum. He is there to see that nothing happens to a rare Aztec Codex (manuscript) which is rumored to be cursed and will disappear on its third night in the museum. The room is tightly secured. The lights go out unexpectedly, and when they are restored, the Codex is gone - but an interesting man has appeared in its place and introduces himself as Trevis Tarrant.
The Episode of the Tangible Illusion (Norrisville, NJ*): Jerry Phelan's sister's friend, Valerie Mopish, has just had a new house built adjacent to her old home which she shared with her brother. Soon Valerie is tormented by strange occurrences in the house: phantom footsteps, mysterious lights, and bizarre images in mirrors. But it's not just tormenting Valerie - these are observed by Jerry and Tarrant as well.
The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem (New York City): Jerry, now married to Valerie, are visiting Tarrant at his high-rise apartment. The apartment manager has been alerted to odd circumstances at the building's rooftop penthouse. The electrician has heard reequiem music coming from the dark, apparently unoccupied penthouse. Tarrant peeks through the skylight to see a dead woman's body. The police come and force the door. The dead woman is alone in the penthouse - and all openings sealed from the inside - so where is the killer?
The Episode of the "Torment IV" (New Hampshire): Jerry, Valerie, and Tarrant are vacationing at a New Hampshire lake when they hear a story about a cursed boat, the Torment IV. This brings them to discuss the [true life] episode of the Mary Celeste, a brigantine found abandoned and adrift with no crew in 1872. The cursed boat on their lake has had three incidents in which the passengers suddenly panicked, jumped overboard, and were lost. Tarrant takes the "cursed" boat out himself and discovers the cause, and suggests the same issue may have caused the Mary Celeste incident.
The Episode of the Headless Horrors (Norrisville, NJ*): Jerry and Tarrant decide to investigate the appearance of several headless bodies, left by the roadside. They have occurred near an all-night gas station. Police set up surveillance on either side and find a body gets deposited yet no cars passing through have stopped. Not only that, but none of the bodies can be identified.
The Episode of the Vanishing Harp (Hartford, CT): In this locked-room puzzle, a historic harp, kept in a glass case, vanishes from a secure library. The owner is worried, as there is an ominous historical family poem which predicts misfortune if the harp disappears three times. The harp reappears, then vanishes again. Tarrant decides to spend the night in the library to see if it happens a third time.
The Episode of the Man with Three Eyes (Norrisville, NJ*): Jerry, Valerie, and Tarrant are dining out. They see butler Katoh in another booth along with a couple of suspected spies. Suddenly there is a commotion. One of the spies, Olga Markova, is found stabbed to death. A mysterious man, Monsieur Hor, slips Tarrant a sealed envelope with a clue inside. He claims to have a third inner eye, with powerful powers of observation.
The Episode of the Final Bargain (Norrisville, NJ*): Tarrant has always had a crush on Valerie's sister, Mary. Now Mary falls into an unexplained coma and the doctors cannot identify why, or treat her. Monseiur Hor appears and offers a solution, involving detecting and treating Mary's aura. But it comes at a cost, to which Tarrant agrees.
Review: These stories are what you would get by mixing Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and S.S. Van Dine's Philo Vance. From Doyle we get the format of the Watson companion/narrator/documenter as he accompanies the hobby-detective Tarrant on his "episodes". From Van Dine we get the pedantic academic lectures on obscure subjects which have no direct relation to the investigation at hand. They are a bit longer than the Sherlock Holmes adventures, yet still hold the attention closely.
Each story builds upon and refers back to the previous ones, so these should be read in order. Similar to the Holmes stories, there are also references to other adventures (apparently not documented).
In Codex' Curse, I did see immediately how the theft of the Codex was accomplished. No great revelation here. In The Tangible Illusion the big giveaway came right at the beginning when it is mentioned that Valerie's brother is an architect, but the cause of the phenonema was still clever. The Nail and the Requiem has the locked-room penthouse common to several mysteries of the era, with a unique, interesting solution. The Torment IV has a recap of the Mary Celeste incident, and even offers a possible solution to that mystery as well (although a little literary license is taken in the details of the that incident - compare this account to the more factual Wikipedia article).
The Episode of the Headless Horrors was troubling and cringy. As is sometimes common with writings from this period, there are pejorative references to various nationalities; in particular, it unfairly stereotypes Haitians, even rendering their speech in phonetic English.
The Man With the Three Eyes (not literal eyes, thankfully) introduces Monsieur Hor, who guides Tarrant with a vital clue as to how a killing was performed in a crowded restaurant. The Episode of the Final Bargain is the most "way out there" story, with a lot of mumbo-jumbo about auras, and a somewhat romantic/wistful ending.
*apparently a fictitious place, I could find no reference to it, although there is a Morrisville, NJ.
