Harry Stephen Keeler - Sing Sing Nights

Harry Stephen Keeler's Sing Sing Nights is one of his most unusual books. The premise is highly implausible, yet it perfectly reflects Keeler's boundless imagination. Three men have been sentenced to death for murder, but only one of them is actually innocent. In an effort to prove his innocence, the prisoners decide to tell three stories to the night guard. It is an unlikely narrative framework, but once the reader accepts it, the novel unfolds as three almost self-contained novellas.

The first story is by far the strongest. It revolves around the theft of an expensive necklace belonging to a wealthy young woman during a masquerade ball. This is the closest the book comes to a conventional detective story, and its mystery is both entertaining and well-paced.

The second tale is somewhat weaker but still intriguing. A newspaper reporter is assigned to interview a Chinese princess who is travelling through the United States. Like many of Keeler's works, it relies on exotic settings and unlikely coincidences, elements that fascinated the author throughout his career.

The third story is, in my opinion, the weakest. A man is horribly injured in an accident at a circus. At the same time, a monkey involved in the same accident suffers irreversible brain damage. An eccentric group of doctors performs a bizarre operation, transplanting the healthy human brain into the monkey's body. Unable to accept life as an intelligent ape and realizing that he has no future in the outside world, the protagonist agrees to work for the circus. Eventually, another extraordinary operation takes place: the scientist transplants his brain once again, this time into the healthy body of a dead nobleman who had stolen his fiancée. When the protagonist awakens, he discovers that he has regained a human body—and, with it, his lost love.

This final story abandons detective fiction almost entirely in favor of grotesque science fiction. While imaginative, it stretches credibility far beyond the limits established by the earlier stories and is the least satisfying of the three.

The framing narrative involving the three condemned prisoners is also somewhat disappointing. Keeler never fully resolves it in a convincing way, leaving the ending feeling abrupt and rather unclear. This is characteristic of his fiction in general: his greatest strength lies in his inexhaustible imagination and unpredictable plotting, while psychological depth, realistic characterization, and tightly constructed endings are often secondary.

Sing Sing Nights is therefore an uneven but fascinating novel. It showcases both Keeler's greatest virtues and his most obvious flaws. Readers looking for a conventional detective novel may be frustrated, but those willing to follow Keeler's eccentric imagination will find a work unlike almost anything else in Golden Age crime fiction.

Harry Stephen Keeler - Riddle Of The Travelling Skull

 

Harry Stephen Keeler is a writer many mystery fans have never heard of — but once you step into his world, it’s hard to get out. Riddle of the Travelling Skull is one of his most famous (and most unhinged) novels, a book that reads like something Agatha Christie might’ve written... on LSD.

The story follows Calthorpe, who accidentally switches suitcases on a train trip to Chicago. Back home, he opens the suitcase only to find — a skull. Inside it: a bullet, mysterious papers, and clues that lead him down a bizarre investigation involving theft, murder, and deception.

We learn that a man named Phalmsey had stolen $20,000 from a gambler, and his friend Pelton — instead of reporting him — decided to kill him and take the money for himself. Things grow even more tangled when a man named Payne appears, demanding $20,000 in exchange for the skull, which could be used as evidence to send someone to prison for life.

During their conversation, Payne reveals that he is actually Phalmsey — he had foreseen Pelton’s murderous intent, jumped into a river, escaped to London, and found an almost identical skull to fake his own death and later blackmail Pelton for the stolen money.

But in the final twist, when Calthorpe lights a match in the darkness of the park, he sees that the man he's been speaking to isn’t Phalmsey — but his old friend, John Barr. What this means exactly remains unclear. The mystery is unresolved. The novel ends in a way that may seem either nonsensical or brilliant — depending on your patience and your tolerance for chaos.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the ending. The final twist — where the mysterious blackmailer turns out to be John Barr, a relatively minor character — raises more questions than it answers. If it really was Barr, how could he have known all the intricate details about Phalmsey, Pelton, the stolen money, and the skull?

One might argue that Keeler was more interested in creating a dizzying narrative than in resolving it. The novel leaves you with the sense that the answer is just out of reach — or that maybe there was never meant to be one at all.

Still, the book is an experience. For readers who enjoy strange logic, relentless twists, and narratives that feel like dreams verging on nightmares, Riddle of the Travelling Skull offers a truly unique ride — even if it doesn’t quite take you to a clear destination.

Harry Stephen Keeler - The Five Silver Buddhas

This is probably the weirdest crime novel that I read. It revolves around man who bought at an auction figure of buddha, and then story develops as other men bought four other ones. As it turns out, these figurines bring bad luck and in the novel we see some secret weapon stolen from rich man, which could help the war of white people versus yellow. Neil Gaiman said of the Keeler that he was probably best bad writer of all time but that he loves him. All in all, an atypical murder mystery, but rather funny.