The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories

CLAYTON RAWSON (1906-1971)

The mystery writer is often described as an entertainer who possesses a bag of tricks. Inside the bag are devices designed to deceive: sleights of hand, least likely suspects, and apparently impossible situations like locked rooms. Any writer can play with these tricks in a workaday manner; any hack can pull the wool over readers' eyes. But Clayton Rawson proved that the mystery writer who has actual experience as a working magician can trick readers even while urging them to keep their eyes wide open. In so doing, Rawson demonstrated that he could work magic on the page as well as on the stage.

Under the stage and pen name The Great Merlini, Rawson earned the admiration of the best magicians, mystery writers, and mystery editors in the business. Born in Elyria, Ohio, he graduated from Ohio State University and then studied at the Chicago Art Institute before beginning his multiple careers as performing magician, inventor of magic tricks, writer on the subject of magic, and editor and author of detective novels and short stories.

An inventor of some fifty original magic tricks, he is known among magicians for perfecting the gimmick that enables the performance of the famous 'floating-lady trick' in one's own backyard. Rawson used his experience to turn out practical volumes on magic, including «How to Entertain Children with Magic You Can Do» and «The Golden Book of Magic.» He also wrote a column for «Hugard's Magic Monthly.»

Rawson's best-known magazine work, however, was in the detective field. After serving as both associate editor of «True Detective Magazine» and editor of «Master Detective Magazine «during the 1940's, he became a director of the Unicorn Mystery Book Club and then editor of the «Inner Sanctum Mysteries» series at Simon and Schuster. In the mid-1940's, his Great Merlini stories began to appear in «Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,» where they were first published without solutions so that readers could compete to solve them. Rawson eventually became the managing editor of that magazine.

In four novels and a dozen short stories featuring The Great Merlini, the magician-sleuth uses his expertise to see through the misleading clues that dumbfound the police. Not only are the solutions discovered through the magician's skills, but the clues themselves are laid out with a professional awareness of how to deceive the reader, as «From Another World» ably demonstrates.