Screwball Circus Mysteries

When the Cedarville bank is robbed of a gold shipment, Sheriff Bucyrus Duckhouse of Willis Creek was just where he wants to be -- waiting at the end of the Smoky Ridge Tunnel where any minute the robbers have just got to emerge. But meanwhile, carny Jim Craney has a truckful of trouble as he scrambles to catch up with the rest of his circus. A truck full of lioness and five newborn kittens! The only way he can make it in time to marry the circus woman he loves is if the Sheriff will let him take the Straightaway through the tunnel. Otherwise he'll have to take Old Twistibus, the road so crooked they gave it a name.

It all started with a murder 20 years earlier. A ragpicker was found in a closet, stabbed in the back with a jewelled dagger-through an ace of spades! There's a reward for the solution to this old murder and Bill Chattuck, driver for MacWhorter's Motorized Circus, must get that reward-and prove the legitimacy of his girl, Melody-or they'll never get married! But first, there's the matter of that rare copy of Beowulf with a secret coded message in it, and the windingest road in the world, Old Twistibus, standing between Bill and happiness. It's a crazy contretemps only Harry Stephen Keeler could unravel.

An unholy love! That's what young Erlys Janway found herself in the throes of as she awaits word from her brother, Pell Barneyfield, as to whether they are truly blood-related. If he can come up with the proof they're not related - and then make it to Foleysburg, where MacWhorter's traveling circus is camped - then Erlys won't be compelled to marry Golden-Tongue, the circus barker. But first Pell'll have to traverse Old Twistibus, a road so crooked they gave it a name. In the meantime, Angus MacWhorter, kindly owner of the circus, is offered $1000 for a $10 diorama of a hanged fish with a crown. What's with that? Only the answer to all of the riddles of this classic 1953 tale, the last Keeler published in English during his lifetime.

Ho hum. Another day; another corpse dredged up from the depths of Lake Michigan. This time it's a body having the bottom half of a negro man and the top half of a Chinese woman joined together at the waist by some kind of greenish glue. But we don't linger long at this unpleasant scene because Angus MacWhorter and his Mammoth Motorized Show are in another pickle. If Angus can't pay back $3000 - in $100 bills whose serial numbers must be evenly divisible by 13! - he'll lose the circus to the dastardly Geispitz Gmohling. But the needed bills are on the other side of Old Twistibus, the windingest road in the world, and Giff O'Dell, who has the bills, is obsessed with solving the Crazy Corpse murder. Now that is a pickle!

There's nothing new under the sun in Idiots' Valley, home of Harry Stephen Keeler's Screwball Circus. Angus MacWhorter's circus has made it across Old Twistibus - the windingest road in the world - but there's still an important wagon that Rance Holly has to drive to catch up with the rest of the circus in Foleysburg, or the circus will be lost to rival entrepreneur, Wolf Gladish. There's no nuttier place in the country than Idiots' Valley, with its pack of illiterate bumpkins, and Harry and Hazel milk it for all it's worth in this first English-language edition of a Keeler classic!

You know the locale: Idiot's Valley USA; you know the circus: MacWhorter's Mammoth Traveling Circus; and you'll never forget the road: Ol' Twistibus! But this time Brock Lindo, the circus driver who's madly in love with the spot-girl, Melodee Ashbrooke, is the poor soul who must cross Ol' Twistibus in record time or Melodee will marry Jules DiValo, the silver-tongued barker! Not only that, he has to somehow prove to Melodee that she's not the product of an illegitimate marriage - and the proof is in far-off England. The Screwball Circus Saga continues to roll out of the fecund typewriter of Harry and Hazel Keeler and now, for the first time you can immerse yourself in it in the English language!

Noah Quindry is worried. An arsonist is striking the towns that his travelling circus visits and it may be one of his employees! On top of that, some madman - perhaps the arsonist? - is stealing instances of the letter "U" from signs, billboards, letters, even the tattooed chest of Screamo the Clown. It's one of Harry and Hazel Keeler's wackiest mysteries ever.

Who are those six mysterious figures that are looming outside the owner's trailer of Angus MacWhorter's Mammoth Motorized Shows? And why would they want the copy of a pulp magazine that he bought for ten cents? The answers have something to do with a gangster, the tong of the Lean Grey Rats, and a group calling itself the Society of Retired Clergymen.

What would you do if you were Angus MacWhorter, owner of the Biggest Little Circus on Earth, and you'd been offered $3000 for just ten minutes alone with the two-headed child who at one time was the star feature of the circus? Why, you'd send your right hand man, Brock Colburn, to Chicago to check up on the offering party. The trouble is, Brock is wanted in Chitown for an old felony he didn't commit, and any sleuthing he does is going to have to be under deep cover. If only Brock could meet some sympathetic person who could help him, someone like Ardis Waring - Mrs. Ardis Waring. And let's not even mention the Chinese laundryman known as Ah Hell. Yes, Ah Hell. Let's don't mention him.

In December of 1946 Harry Stephen Keeler wrote a huge novel he called THE ACE OF SPADES MURDER. No publisher would tackle a novel so big so he split it up, eventually making five new novels from it. THE CASE OF THE JEWELED RAGPICKER was the one first published, in 1948 by Phoenix Press. In it, circus driver Bill Chattuck must make his way across Idiots' Valley via Old Twistibus in time to prevent something horrible from happening. You know the story - but this time the notorious Phoenix Press seems to have added its own brand of wackiness to Harry's and produced the wildest Old Twistibus saga yet.