The Great Merlini is a

fictional detective Fictional detectives are characters in detective fiction. These individuals have long been a staple of detective mystery crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories. Much of early detective fiction was written during the ...

created by

Clayton Rawson Clayton Rawson (August 15, 1906 – March 1, 1971) was an American mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. His four novels frequently invoke his great knowledge of stage magic and feature as their fictional detective The Great Merlini, a ...

. He is a professional magician who appears in four locked room or impossible crime novels written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as in a dozen

short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

. "His chronicler, free-lance writer Ross Harte, notes that Merlini hates the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

system, beer, inactivity, opera, golf, and sleep. He is, on the other hand, highly partial to surf bathing, table tennis, puzzles, circuses, and Times Square, where he operates a magic shop. Merlini's friendly rival is Inspector Homer Gavigan of Homicide, an intelligent man who is, nonetheless, amazed by the magician's feats."Penzler, Otto, ''et al.'' ''Detectionary''. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1977.

Bibliography

Novels

Death from a Top Hat ''Death from a Top Hat'' (1938) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. It is the first of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist. In a poll of 17 detective story writ ...

(1938) * The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) *

The Headless Lady ''The Headless Lady'' (1940) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. A character in the novel, a detective story writer named Stuart Towne, has the same name as a pen name of Rawson. This is the third of four mysteries featurin ...

(1940) *

No Coffin for the Corpse ''No Coffin for the Corpse'' (1942) is a whodunnit mystery novel written by Clayton Rawson. It is the last of four mysteries featuring The Great Merlini, a stage magician and Rawson's favorite protagonist. Merlini would however, continue to ap ...

(1942)

Short stories

Twelve short stories featuring Merlini were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine between 1946 and 1971. In 1979, they were collected under the title of ''The Great Merlini''. * The Clue of the Tattooed Man * The Clue of the Broken Legs * The Clue of the Missing Motive * From Another World * Off the Face of the Earth * Merlini and the Lie Detector * Merlini and the Vanished Diamonds * Merlini and the Sound Effects Murder * Nothing Is Impossible * Miracles - All in the Day's Work * Merlini and the Photographic Clue * The World's Smallest Locked Room

Adaptations

At least two movies were made based on the Merlini books. One of them, ''

Miracles for Sale ''Miracles for Sale'' is a 1939 American mystery film directed by Tod Browning, and starring Robert Young and Florence Rice. It was Browning's final film as a director. The film is based on a locked-room mystery novel by well-known mystery wr ...

'' (1939), was based on ''Death from a Top Hat'' but had no character named Merlini—instead, Robert Young played "The Great Morgan". The 1942 movie '' The Man Who Wouldn't Die'', starring

Lloyd Nolan Lloyd Benedict Nolan (August 11, 1902 – September 27, 1985) was an American film and television actor. Among his many roles, Nolan is remembered for originating the role of private investigator Michael Shayne in a series of 1940s B movies. Bi ...

, was based on ''No Coffin for the Corpse'', but the Merlini character was replaced by

Michael Shayne Michael "Mike" Shayne is a fictional private detective character created during the late 1930s by writer Brett Halliday, a pseudonym of Davis Dresser. The character appeared in a series of seven films starring Lloyd Nolan for Twentieth Century Fo ...

, a popular fictional private eye at the time, created by the writer

Brett Halliday Brett Halliday (July 31, 1904 – February 4, 1977) is the primary pen name of Davis Dresser, an American mystery and western writer. Halliday is best known for the long-lived series of Michael Shayne mysteries he wrote, and later commission ...

. Merlini was shown in a brief segment where he advises Shayne, and was played by an uncredited Charles Irwin. A 30-minute pilot for a television series was directed by

Ted Post Theodore I. Post (March 31, 1918 – August 20, 2013) was an American director of film and television. Highly prolific, Post directed numerous episodes of well-known television series including '' Rawhide'', ''Gunsmoke'', and ''The Twilight Zone'' ...

in 1951, but no further episodes were made. ''The Transparent Man'', written by Rawson, starred

Jerome Thor Jerome Thor (January 5, 1915 — August 12, 1993) was an American actor of the stage and screen. He is best known for his work in Broadway plays from 1935 through 1946, and on American television during the 1950s. He starred as Robert Cannon in '' ...

as The Great Merlini—who in this incarnation was a stage magician—with

Barbara Cook Barbara Cook (October 25, 1927 – August 8, 2017) was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals ''Plain and Fancy'' (1955), ''Candide'' (1956) and ''The Music Man'' (19 ...

as his assistant Julie and featuring

E. G. Marshall E. G. Marshall (born Everett Eugene Grunz;Everett Eugene Grunz in Minnesota, U.S., Birth Index, 1900-1934, Ancestry.comEverett Eugene Grunz in the U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, accessed via Ancestry.com June 18, ...

as a criminal.

References

Fictional amateur detectives Fictional stage magicians {{novel-char-stub