IsabelOstrander was an American socialite from a well-to-do New Yorkfamily, of Dutch descent, who traveled and lived all over the worldat various times, but she disappointed her parents when she decidedto study drama and married a Broadway songwriter – before embarkingon a writing career. Not without success! Ostrander prolificallywrote short stories and serial novels for the early (pulp) magazines,which widely read and made her something of a household name. Youmight not have read any of her stories or even heard of her name, butyou have likely read AgathaChristie's short story collection Partnersin Crime (1929). One of the short stories, "Finessing theKing" (1924), parodies Ostrander's McCarty and Riordan series. Aparody blunted by Ostrander's plunge into obscurity, but it goes toshow how well-known her work was in the 1910s and '20s. Moreimportantly, she was something of a trailblazer.
Ostrandercreated one of the first blind detectives, DamonGaunt, preceded only by Clinton H. Stagg's ThornleyColton and Ernest Bramah's MaxCarrados. Ashesto Ashes (1919) is credited with being one of the firstinverted crime novels predating AnthonyBerkeley's "Francis Iles" crime novels by a dozen years. TheClue in the Air (1917), today's subject, has been known to me asa proto-1930s detective novel listed in Robert Adey's Locked RoomMurders (1991) for ages. Somehow, The Clue in the Airproved to be remarkable difficult to find for a book that should havebeen in the public domain for the past twenty or thirty years.
Soit was a welcome surprise to learn The Clue in the Air finallygot a proper, long overdue reprint as part of "Otto Penzler'sLocked Room Library" series. A new, hopefully long-running serieswith a so far unusual, but interesting, selection of titles –mostly covering relatively obscure titles from the 1920s. This firstbadge comprises of Anna Katharine Green's Miss Hurd: An Enigma(1894), Eden Phillpotts' The Grey Room (1921), Arthur J. Rees'TheMoon Rock (1922), Louis Tracy's The Passing of CharlesLanson (1924), W. Adolphe Roberts' TheHaunting Hand (1926), Ronald A. Knox's TheThree Taps (1927) and Ostrander's The Clue in the Air.They are in the public domain, but that doesn't always mean they'rereadily available or undeserving of a proper edition. If this is theroute this reprint series is taking, I can only hope obscure,hard-to-find public domain locked room mysteries like Fred M. White'sserial "Who Killed James Trent" (1901), W.A. Mackenzie's FlowerO' the Peach (1916), Charles Chadwick's The Cactus (1925)and Ostrander's Above Suspicion (1923), published as by "Robert Orr Chipperfield," are next in line to be reprinted. Inthe meantime, I'll pick and choose from this first round of reprintsfrom Penzler's Locked Room Library.
TheClue in the Air introduces Ostrander's series-detective,ex-roundsman Timothy McCarty, who resigned from the police force when "the death of a prosperous, saloon-keeping uncle had made himfinancially independent" to become a prosperous landedproprietor and gentleman of leisure – which proved empty andmonotonous. That all changed one sultry, summer evening when McCartyis out for a stroll in the city and bumps into an old colleague,Cunliffe, out on patrol. They chat a little how nothing ever happensin that quiet district of the city, but McCarty reminds him that,when he was still on the force, "all the brawls in the toughwards put together didn't give us half the trouble of one crimepulled off in a residential section." A remark thick withforeshadowing!
McCartycontinued his leisurely stroll when he hears "a sharp, chokingcry from somewhere overhead" and "a swift rush of air assomething hurtled down and fell with a hideous crashing impact on thepavement at his feet." What crashed on the sidewalk of anapartment building is the quivering, broken body of a dying womanuttering the cryptic words, "the—flying—man," throughsmashed lips and broken teeth. A dying message!
Ialready noted Ostrander was something of a trailblazer in the 1910s,creating a blind detective and experimenting with the inverted crime,which can be extended to The Clue in the Air. The story is aprototype, or premonition, of things yet to come. A Van Dine-Queendetective novel written a decade before either S.S.van Dine or ElleryQueen arrived on the scene and has the added distinction of beingthe first detective novel known to use the "dyingmessage" device. Only example preceding it is "The BoscombeValley Mystery" (1891) from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's TheAdventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891). That would have beenimpressive enough for a surprisingly fresh, very readable mysterynovel written/published in 1917, but the deadly fall is eventuallyrevealed to be a locked room problem and the ex-roundsman has tocontend with a Sherlockian rival sleuth. So someone gets to play thefallible detective and provide the story with a false-solution, ofsorts. The Clue in the Air probably deserves more credit forits part in shaping the American detective story of the 1920s and '30s, but more on that in a moment.
InspectorDruet, officially leading the investigations, asks McCarty to comeback to the force in some capacity, but tries to resist the urge toget involved without much success ("I'm not able to get thething out of my mind at all since the poor thing fell at my feet")considering the whole situation is festooned with question marks –starting with the identity of the victim, Marion Rowntree. She'sstepdaughter of the noted banker, Stephen Quimby, who's the executorof the estate left her by her mother until she became of age. In twoweeks time, Marion would have turned twenty-one and her stepfatherwould have been compelled to turn everything over to her. And thatmight have been a problem for obvious reasons. However, Quimbyapparently has an alibi. There are other questions: What was Mariondoing at the apartment building? Where was she pushed from? What'sthe meaning of her dying words? Who else in the apartment buildingcould have pushed her? "Was it the blonde lady on the thirdfloor, or the seemingly frank and straightforward young inventor, orthe bizarre couple who were his immediate neighbors?" Or was itperhaps someone else ("matchwits with Ellery Queen and see if you guess whodunit").
So,as the soon to be Special Officer becomes more involved, McCartyenlists his lifelong friend and (here, anyway) armchair Watson,Dennis Riordan. A city firefighter and enjoyed their little chats atthe firehouse, but otherwise, Riordan's role in the story is verylimited compared to the previously mentioned rival detective, WadeTerhune, "the renowned crime specialist" who's "recordof success is unique in the annals of criminal investigation."Terhune is a parody of Sherlock Holmes with all the “charm” ofPhilo Vance and all the "scientific facilities" of Dr.John Thorndyke or Craig Kennedy. McCarty is speechless the GreatDetective and subjects him to a series of observation, which turn outto be spot on ("mere observation once more, and a littlededuction"), but even more interesting are Terhune's scientificgadgets. Mostly notably, Terhune hooks all the suspects to alie-detector to scientifically measure their responses to a series ofpictures ("...you have each irrefutably recorded your emotionsby the pulse beats in your wrists, in pressing upon the pneumaticcushion"). Terhune and his gadgets sometimes push the storydangerous close to science-fiction and a hybrid mystery ("I haveadjusted a vibratometer, a small apparatus which, as the subject sitsfacing the hearth, will measure the vibration of his breath"),but McCarty's ordinary, everyday common sense prevails over Terhune'sspyglasses, tape measures and "machines with jaw-breakingnames." So... about that ending.
Ostranderwas certainly ahead of the curve and perhaps knew in which directionthe detective story, and novel, was slowly headed. The Clue in theAir is an early example of the direction in which the detectivenovel was slowly taking, but it simply wasn't there yet. Not evenclose! Ostrander evidently had an idea how it would look and feellike, but the last quarter of the story and ending throws all of thatout of the window. Nick Fuller said it best, "impressivebecause it is ahead of its time, disappointing because fair play isstill in the future." However, the twist preceding thischange is actually somewhat clued and something you should be able toanticipate, because it has been done before and beaten like a deadhorse since.
Afterthis point, The Clue in the Air goes from the ancestral motherof the American detective story to just another pulp story litteringthe popular magazines of the day. And it finally reveals why the booksecured a spot in Adey's Locked Room Murders. But don't expectanything grandiose, unless you have a taste for dated, pulp-styleimpossible crimes. I can enjoy a bizarre, pulpy take on the lockedroom mystery, but this needed to be more than just pulp. This is likewatching a runner collapse with the finish line in sight.
Thatbeing said, the high rise building and period setting helped to punchup the locked room angle and scenes. If only Marion's dying messagehad been (ROT13) "gur—fcvqre—zna," which is more accurate and funnytoday, but unfair to expect the book to be a complete conduit intothe future. Ostrander was farsighted, not clairvoyant. The Clue inthe Air is admirably enough as a premonition of the Americandetective novel of the coming decades. Likely served as a blueprintfor some of those writers that would emerge in the coming decades,even though Ostrander is largely forgotten today. So recommended as anot unimportant genre curiosity.
Anote for the curious: Isabel Ostrander died a little over acentury ago, aged 40, on April 26, 1924, of "heartfailure after an illness of several weeks." She was only 40when she died in 1924 and would have been in her early fifties whenthe Golden Age was in full swing in the mid-1930s. I now wonder whatOstrander might have written had she seen what others can do with adetective novel like The Clue in the Air.
