The Scarlet Wizard

Clayton Rawson was a magician, and so naturally, when he wrote mysteries he created a magician detective, The Great Merlini. I believe that Merlini’s first appearance, in Death from a Top Hat, is one of the all-time great fictional debuts. The book is a masterpiece, pure and simple, and understandably, Merlini’s career was all downhill from there. I’ve already reviewed a short story collection of Rawson’s on this blog, in which his Great Merlini tales were brought together. But did you know those aren’t the only short works Rawson wrote? In fact, he also wrote four novellas as “Stuart Towne” starring Don Diavolo, The Scarlet Wizard.

The novellas, as well as all of Rawson’s novels and stories, have been brought back to life by MysteriousPress.com, and I cannot recommend them strongly enough. These e-books are absolutely gorgeous by e-book standards, with excellent formatting, editing, proofreading, etc. And so today, I’d like to share with you my thoughts on the novellas found in Death from Nowhere.

But before I do, I’d like to tell you my one reservation about the collection. There are plenty of terrific images throughout these two stories, but on two occasions, a full-page image illustrated a crucial event in the story… chapters before they happen! It never ruins the method behind seeming impossibilities and doesn’t quite ruin the culprit, but it does tell you that Don Diavolo will have to do such-and-such sooner or later and so you do anticipate, for instance, Diavolo’s way of evading police surveillance at a circus. When I contacted somebody about this issue, I was told that the Rawson estate apparently prefers that layout. I cannot imagine why, unless it has something to do with the original magazine publication’s layout.