The Footprints on the Ceiling (A Crime Classic)

Rating:
Summary: A good fun
Review: If I recall correctly, this was the second of Clayton Rawson's four detective novels featuring The Great Merlini, a famous magician, as a crime-solver, and it has many of the same persons as the first one, Death from a Top Hat. Rawson's great idea was that the locked-room mysteries were a sort of magic tricks, so what would be more natural than having a magician as a detective?

I found this novel very funny, fast-moving and enjoyable to read, as long as you didn't take it very seriously (as the name implies, murderer seems to have left footprints in the ceiling!). What was disappointing, was the actual solutions to several mysteries the book had to offer. They all seemed either too far-fetched or too simple.

However, I would recommend this and other Rawson's books (especially to already-mentioned Death from a Top Hat) to all the fans of humoristic locked-room mysteries in the style of John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson (whose great admirer and friend Rawson was).