Death from a Top Hat: A Great Merlini Mystery

By Clayton Rawson

Book Overview

Now retired from the tour circuit on which he made his name, master magician The Great Merlini spends his days running a magic shop in New York's Times Square and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. The cops call him when faced with crimes so impossible that they can only be comprehended by a magician's mind. In the most recent case, two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under similar circumstances. The list of suspects includes an escape artist, a professional medium, and a ventriloquist, so it's clear that the crimes took place in a realm that Merlini knows well. But in the end it will take his logical skills, and not his magical ones, to apprehend the killer.

Reprinted for the first time in over twenty years, Death from a Top Hat is an ingeniously-plotted puzzle set in the world of New York stage magic, which was at its pinnacle in the early twentieth century. In 1981, the novel was selected as one of the top ten locked room mysteries of all time by a panel of mystery-world luminaries that included Julian Symons, Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen's co-creator Frederic Dannay, and Otto Penzler.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1613161018
• ISBN13: 9781613161012
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: American Mystery Classics
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Outrageously entertaining

Written in the florid style of its time, this book is fun to read if you don't take it too seriously. A good introduction to the Great Merlini, who is featured in three other mysteries novels, the best of which is No Coffin for the Corpse.

Locked room puzzles just don't come any craftier

Rawson -- now pretty much forgotten -- was a magician and wrote 4 locked room mystery novels. The writing is par for the course with such things but the ingenuity matches John Dickson Carr's (OK, nothing matches Carr's story the House in Goblin Woood. But these come close).

Two perplexing locked-room murders

"Death From a Top Hat" has been called a great first novel. For fans of locked-room mysteries, author Clayton Rawson does indeed offer a feast. The book features two locked-room murders and pays homage to the master of the impossible crime, John Dickson Carr, by containing a discussion of the sort found in Carr's "The Three Coffins."The book, one of the "Golden Age" mysteries, features the Great Merlini as the man who solves the crimes. Merlini is a magician and Rawson's frequent protagonist. When a magician is found dead inside his locked and thoroughly sealed apartment, police call in Merlini to help explain the impossible. The suspects, however, are all magicians, and any one of them probably could have come up with several ways of achieving the effect. Before all is said and done, Rawson gives a fascinating look at the world of magic and misdirection. Fans of contemporary mysteries might not be happy with the lack of character development, of which there is almost none. But for those who like their mysteries to be baffling conundrums, this book is a must-read.