Rim of the Pit

"Rim of the Pit" (1944) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Hake Talbot, a pen name of Henning Nelms.

It is one of two mystery novels written by Talbot featuring rugged adventurer Rogan Kincaid (the other being "The Hangman's Handyman.") Both were published in hardback as Inner Sanctum Mysteries. "Rim of the Pit" was published in the pulp magazine "Thrilling Mystery Novel", then as a Dell mapback in the 1940s, a Bantam paperback in the 1960s (as part of "The World's Great Novels of Detection" series chosen by Anthony Boucher), and reprinted in the 1980s in paperback by International Polygonics, Ltd. "The Hangman's Handyman" appeared in a 1940s pulp magazine, but not in paperback form until 2005, when Ramble House produced one.

Plot

A group of people gather at a remote snowbound lodge in the wilds of northern New England. A seance is held in order to reach the dead husband of the medium. Remarried, the medium's husband wants permission from the dead man to open a tract of land to logging. During the seance it appears that the spirit of the dead man returns to possess one of the group, using him as an instrument to murder another of the group. The hero, Rogan Kincaid, is an adventurer who takes it upon himself (with help from a Czech refugee, the daughter of the dead man, and others), to solve the mystery before the police are brought in. As impossibilities pile up (including a locked room murder, footprints that begin and end in the middle of an expanse of snow, and a murderer who seems to be able to fly after being taken over by a Windigo), it looks like the only explanation is a supernatural one.

In a poll of detective story writers this mystery was voted as second best of its type, behind John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man.