by Anthony Boucher
This murder–mystery novel is notorious as a roman a clef, that is, many of its characters are thinly–veiled portraits of real people — more particularly, well–known science–fiction writers in the Los Angeles area in the period immediately before the Second World War. (In fact, the action takes place just one month before Pearl Harbor.) The venerable LASFS itself appears in the guise of the “Mañana Literary Society”. We are, however, at a loss to know why nobody ever returned the favour by writing stories of the adventures of Dr Derringer, the fictional–within–the–fiction character so crucial to the plot.
- 2025–08–05 Foreword by F Paul Wilson, and sections 1—6 of The First Day : Thursday, October 30, 1941
- 2025–08–08 Section 7 of The First Day ; The Second Day : Friday, October 31, 1941 through section 5, in which we discover that Dr Derringer himself appears to be engaged in trying to murder the literary heir of his author!
- 2025–08–12 Recorded aboard a train, with train noises in the background, The Second Day beginning at section 6 ; The Third Day : Saturday, November 1, 1941 in which the locked–room mystery is set up, up to section 4, in which a police sergeant is embarrassed by a combination of back–seats and nuns
- 2025–08–15 Another train recording, and sent out on the wrong date by my error — beginning at section 5 of The Third Day, through the first section of Interlude : Sunday, November 2 to Thursday, November 6, 1941
- 2025–08–19 The third train recording, and second mis–dated recording, beginning at Interlude, section 2
- 2025–08–26 The Ninth Day : Friday, November 7, 1941
- 2025–08–29 Commencement of The Last Day : Saturday, November 8, 1941
- 2025–09–02 Conclusion of The Last Day
- 2025–09–05 Afterword : Saturday, December 6, 1941 and Author’s Afterword (December 12, 1951)