Diagnosing the Impossible

Introduction

Anthony Wynne had a particular talent for making murder appear impossible. Locked rooms, inaccessible crime scenes and circumstances that seemed to defy rational explanation became recurring features of his mysteries. Yet however baffling the crime appeared, somewhere behind the impossibility waited a solution.

Once regarded as a skilled practitioner of the impossible-crime mystery, Wynne gradually disappeared from the shelves while many of his contemporaries remained familiar. Yet his elaborate puzzles and taste for the seemingly inexplicable still offer plenty to challenge the modern mystery reader.

Behind those impossible crimes, however, was a man whose own story proves nearly as unexpected as his fiction. Anthony Wynne was only one part of it.

The Author Behind the Mysteries

Behind Anthony Wynne stood Robert McNair Wilson (1882–1963), a Scottish physician whose interests stretched far beyond medicine. Born in Glasgow, he studied at Glasgow Academy and the University of Glasgow before beginning his medical career at the Western Infirmary. He later developed a particular interest in diseases of the heart, bringing him into contact with one of the leading cardiologists of his generation, Sir James Mackenzie.

During the First World War, Wilson worked with Mackenzie on medical research, including investigations into the effects of trench fever on the heart. Medicine also led him into journalism: for many years he served as medical correspondent for The Times. His admiration for his former colleague eventually produced The Beloved Physician: Sir James Mackenzie (1926), one of several nonfiction works Wilson published under his own name.

Medicine, however, was only one of his interests. Wilson wrote extensively about economics, finance and history, with a particular fascination for Napoleon and the Napoleonic era. He also ventured briefly into politics, standing unsuccessfully as a Liberal parliamentary candidate in the early 1920s. His interest in economics eventually produced Promise to Pay (1934), an examination of banking, credit and the workings of the financial system.

Wilson’s range was remarkable. Physician, medical journalist, historian, biographer and commentator on economics, he moved comfortably between subjects that might have occupied several separate careers. That breadth of knowledge would eventually provide fertile ground for another side of his writing life—but before Anthony Wynne could send fictional investigators in pursuit of murderers, Robert McNair Wilson had already built a formidable career of his own.

Meet the Detective: Dr Eustace Hailey

Dr Eustace Hailey is difficult to overlook. A London physician with a practice in Harley Street, his imposing size earns him the nickname “the Giant of Harley Street.” Portly, monocled and fond of snuff, he might at first seem an unlikely figure to pursue murderers through locked rooms and apparently impossible crimes. Appearances, however, are deceptive.

Hailey possesses formidable powers of observation and analysis, qualities greatly respected by Inspector Bills of Scotland Yard, whom he assists in his investigations. His medical training and laboratory experience provide another advantage when confronted with unusual evidence, while his physical size does little to restrict him: when an investigation demands it, Hailey is quite capable of abandoning the comforts of Harley Street and even taking to a tent.

Wynne also gave his detective tastes beyond medicine and murder. Hailey prefers Bach to Beethoven and Holbein to Rubens, small details that suggest a man with definite opinions and a cultivated eye. At home he is attended by his valet, Jenkins, while beyond Harley Street he repeatedly finds himself confronted with crimes that appear to defy any rational explanation.

Across a long series of investigations, Hailey became particularly associated with the locked-room mystery. Faced with sealed rooms, impossible entrances and crimes that seem almost supernatural, the Giant of Harley Street searches for the human explanation hidden behind the impossible.

Cases Worth Discovering

Impossible crimes became one of Anthony Wynne’s specialties, and few demonstrate his taste for the seemingly inexplicable better than Murder of a Lady (1931). In a Scottish Highland castle, Mary Gregor is found stabbed in her bedroom despite a locked door and barred windows. A mysterious fish scale provides one of the strangest clues, while local legends and further apparently impossible deaths threaten to push the explanation toward the supernatural. Dr Eustace Hailey, however, remains firmly in search of a human solution. Martin Edwards considers the novel perhaps Wynne’s most ingenious locked-room mystery.

The Mystery of the Evil Eye (1925) takes us back to the beginning of Hailey’s long career. The novel introduced readers to the Harley Street physician and established the combination of medical knowledge, observation and unusual circumstances that would characterize many of his later investigations. It also became the first Hailey mystery translated into French, appearing as La Pupille sanglante in 1931.

The Case of the Gold Coins (1933) presents a different kind of impossibility. A body discovered on a beach poses an apparently insoluble problem: the surrounding sand bears no footprints capable of explaining how either victim or murderer reached the spot. Instead of the sealed chamber of the traditional locked-room mystery, Wynne transforms an open landscape into a crime scene that seems equally impossible.

By the time Death of a Shadow (1950) appeared, Hailey had been investigating murder for twenty-five years. The novel brought one of the Golden Age’s more unusual detective careers to its conclusion, leaving behind a substantial series in which apparently impossible circumstances repeatedly challenged both Hailey and the reader.

Legacy

Anthony Wynne carved out a distinctive place in Golden Age detective fiction through his fascination with the impossible crime. Locked rooms, inaccessible crime scenes and apparently supernatural events became recurring challenges in his work, but the solution ultimately remained rooted in human ingenuity. His medical background gave him another set of tools to draw upon, allowing scientific and medical knowledge to become part of the machinery behind his puzzles.

Dr Eustace Hailey’s career stretched from 1925 to 1950, an impressive twenty-five-year run. Robert McNair Wilson outlived his detective by more than a decade, dying on 29 November 1963, aged eighty-one. By then, however, Anthony Wynne’s once substantial reputation had largely faded, and his mysteries became increasingly difficult for new generations of readers to encounter.

That began to change with the modern revival of Golden Age crime fiction. In 2016, the British Library Crime Classics series returned Murder of a Lady to print after approximately eighty-five years, giving modern readers another opportunity to encounter the writer once regarded as a master of the locked-room mystery. New editions have since helped restore Wynne to the conversation surrounding the Golden Age and its forgotten practitioners.

Unlike several of his better-known contemporaries, Wynne did not benefit from a lasting tradition of major film or television adaptations to keep his name before the public. His return has instead come through the books themselves—a fitting revival for a writer whose elaborate impossibilities are once again available for readers to solve.

Case Closed

Anthony Wynne spent a quarter of a century asking readers to believe, if only for a moment, that the impossible had happened. The pleasure lay not simply in discovering how the trick was done, but in watching certainty slowly give way as each apparently reasonable explanation failed.

Today, his name may require more searching than it once did, but perhaps that makes encountering him all the more satisfying. A forgotten writer, an imposing doctor with a monocle, and a trail of crimes that should never have been possible—what more could a curious mystery reader ask for?

Ready to let Dr Eustace Hailey diagnose your first impossible crime?

References

Books

Edwards, Martin. The Golden Age of Murder. HarperCollins, 2015.
Spehner, Norbert. Le Détectionnaire: Dictionnaire des personnages du roman policier. Alire, 2000.