The Broken Sword is a fantasy novel by American writer Poul Anderson , originally published on 5 November 1954. It was issued in a revised edition by Ballantine Books as the twenty-fourth volume of their Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in January 1971. The original text was returned to print by Gollancz in 2002. The novel is set during the Viking Age and the story contains many references to the Norse mythology .
41-545: The book tells the story of Skafloc, elven-fosterling and originally son of Orm the Strong. The story begins with the marriage of Orm the Strong and Aelfrida of the English. Orm kills a witch's family on the land and later half-converts to Christianity, but quarrels with the local priest and sends him off the land. Meanwhile, an elf named Imric, with the help of the witch, seeks to capture the newly born son of Orm. In his place, Imric leaves
82-399: A changeling called Valgard. The real son of Orm is taken away to elven lands and named Skafloc by the elves who raise him. As the story continues, both Skafloc and Valgard have significant roles in the war between the trolls and the elves. Anthony Boucher praised the original edition as "a magnificent saga of the interplay of gods, demigods, faerie, heroes and men." Groff Conklin described
123-531: A clever means of killing the Emperor without entering the room where he slept – all these means having been available in medieval times. The locked-room genre also appears in children's detective fiction, although the crime committed is usually less severe than murder. One notable author is Enid Blyton , who wrote several juvenile detective series, often featuring seemingly impossible crimes that her young amateur detectives set out to solve. The Hardy Boys novel While
164-476: A few comic book impossible crimes seem to draw on the "weird menace" tradition of the pulps. However, celebrated writers such as G. K. Chesterton , Arthur Conan Doyle , Clayton Rawson , and Sax Rohmer have also had their works adapted to comic book form. In 1934, Dashiell Hammett created the comic strip Secret Agent X9 , illustrated by Alex Raymond , which contained a locked-room episode. One American comic book series that made good use of locked-room mysteries
205-543: A list of Best Crime Fiction of the Year from 1949 to 1967, listing from 12 to 15 titles each year. He published his list as Anthony Boucher. Boucher was a poker player, a political activist, a sport fan (football, basketball, track, gymnastics and rugby), a Sherlockian in The Baker Street Irregulars and a chef. He was also an expert collector of recordings of early operatic singers. In 1964-1965 Boucher worked as
246-552: A mad scramble and unconvincing slaughter". British fantasy writer Michael Moorcock has written that The Broken Sword greatly influenced his stories; Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné series features a magic sword, Stormbringer , which has many similarities to Skafloc's sword. Moorcock further declared The Broken Sword superior to Tolkien , calling it "a fast-paced doom-drenched tragedy in which human heroism, love and ambition, manipulated by amoral gods, elves and trolls, led inevitably to tragic consequences." Despite his admiration of
287-432: A man who allegedly shot himself in a sealed bunker when he had crippling arthritis in his hands, how a woman was shot in a sealed room with no gun and without the window being opened or broken, how a dead body could have vanished from a locked room when the only door was in full view of someone else, etc. In the 21st century, examples of popular detective series novels that include locked-room type puzzles are The Girl with
328-399: A murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues , and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax . The prima facie impression from a locked room crime is that the perpetrator
369-810: A story consultant for the Kraft Suspense Theatre . Boucher died of lung cancer on April 29, 1968, at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland. Bouchercon , the "Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Convention", was named in his honor, as are their annual Anthony Awards . Descriptions of those conventions from the first, in 1970, until that in 2004, appear in Marvin Lachman's The Heirs of Anthony Boucher . [These three volumes were later published in one volume.] Locked room mystery The " locked-room " or " impossible crime " mystery
410-506: A very busy and productive decade for Boucher. In 1945 he launched into a spectacular three-year radio career, plotting more than 100 episodes for The Adventures of Ellery Queen , while also providing plots for the bulk of the Sherlock Holmes radio dramas. By the summer of 1946 he had created his own mystery series for the airwaves, The Casebook of Gregory Hood . ("I was turning out three scripts each week for as many shows," he stated. "It
451-445: A wrong impression of my work and me. At the same time, I don’t feel free to tamper with what he has done. A partial adaptation of the novel, done as a serialized black-and-white graphic novel , was adapted by fantasy writer Tom Reamy and illustrated by professional fantasy artist George Barr . This was published during the mid-to-late 1960s over several issues of Reamy's twice Hugo Award –nominated science fiction fanzine Trumpet ;
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#1732855054942492-462: Is Mike W. Barr's Maze Agency . John Dickson Carr , who also wrote as Carter Dickson, was known as "master of the locked-room mystery". His 1935 novel The Hollow Man (US title: The Three Coffins ) was in 1981 voted the best locked-room mystery novel of all time by 17 authors and reviewers, although Carr himself names Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room as his favorite. (Leroux's novel
533-505: Is a dangerous, supernatural entity capable of defying the laws of nature by walking through walls or vanishing into thin air. The need for a rational explanation for the crime is what drives the protagonist to look beyond these appearances and solve the puzzle. Edgar Allan Poe 's " The Murders in the Rue Morgue " (1841) is generally considered the first locked-room mystery. However, Robert Adey credits Sheridan Le Fanu for "A Passage in
574-443: Is a gifted amateur detective who uses pure brainpower to solve his cases. The French writer Paul Halter , who wrote over 30 novels, almost exclusively in the locked-room genre, has been described as the natural successor to John Dickson Carr . Although strongly influenced by Carr and Agatha Christie , he has a unique writing style featuring original plots and puzzles. A collection of ten of his short stories, entitled The Night of
615-476: Is a preferred murder method. Despite the gore, most norms of the classic detective fiction novel are strictly followed. Umberto Eco , in his 2000 novel Baudolino , takes the locked-room theme into medieval times. The book's plot suggests that Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I had not drowned in a river, as history records, but died mysteriously at night while a guest at the castle of a sinister Armenian noble. The book features various suspects, each of whom had
656-419: Is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction . The crime in question, typically murder ("locked-room murder"), is committed in circumstances under which it appeared impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene , commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example the original literal "locked room":
697-499: Is also something of a roman à clef about the Southern California science fiction culture of the time, featuring thinly veiled versions of personalities such as Robert A. Heinlein , L. Ron Hubbard and rocket scientist / occultist /fan Jack Parsons . Boucher also scripted for radio and was involved in many other activities, as described by William F. Nolan in his essay "Who Was Anthony Boucher?": The 1940s proved to be
738-512: The San Francisco Chronicle . In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym " H. H. Holmes ", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it "Herman W. Mudgett" (the murderer's real name). In a 1981 poll of 17 detective story writers and reviewers, his novel Nine Times Nine was voted as the ninth best locked room mystery of all time. White
779-848: The New York Times Book Review , while also writing crime-fiction reviews for The New York Herald Tribune as Holmes (he also reviewed SF and fantasy (as H. H. Holmes) for the Herald Tribune ) and functioning as chief critic for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine . He edited True Crime Detective , supervised the Mercury Mystery Line and (later) the Dell Great Mystery Library; hosted Golden Voices , his series of historical opera recordings for Pacifica Radio , and served (in 1951) as president of Mystery Writers of America. As part of his reviews of mystery novels, he published
820-566: The psychological thrillers which brought them international fame, two of which were adapted for the screen as Vertigo ( 1954 novel ; 1958 film) and Diabolique (1955 film). The most prolific writer during the period immediately following the Golden Age was Japanese: Akimitsu Takagi wrote almost 30 locked-room mysteries, starting in 1949 and continuing to his death in 1995. A number have been translated into English. In Robert van Gulik 's mystery novel The Chinese Maze Murders (1951), one of
861-469: The 1930s often contained impossible crime tales, dubbed weird menace , in which a series of supernatural or science-fiction type events is eventually explained rationally. Notable practitioners of the period were Fredric Brown , Paul Chadwick and, to a certain extent, Cornell Woolrich , although these writers tended to rarely use the Private Eye protagonists that many associate with pulp fiction. Quite
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#1732855054942902-466: The Clock Ticked was (originally) about a locked and isolated room where a man seeks privacy, but receives mysterious threatening messages there. The messages are delivered by a mechanical device lowered into the room through a chimney. King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938–1939) is the only Tintin adventure that is a locked-room mystery. No homicide is involved; rather the crime is the disappearance of
943-700: The Secret History of an Irish Countess" (1838), which was published three years before Poe's "Rue Morgue". Other early locked-room mysteries include Israel Zangwill 's The Big Bow Mystery (1892); " The Adventure of the Speckled Band " (1892) and " The Adventure of the Empty House " (1903), two Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle ; " The Problem of Cell 13 " (1905) by Jacques Futrelle , featuring "The Thinking Machine" Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen ; and Le Mystère de la Chambre Jaune ( The Mystery of
984-571: The Wolf , has been translated into English. The Japanese writer Soji Shimada has been writing impossible crime stories since 1981. The first, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (1981), and the second, Murder in the Crooked House (1982), are the only ones to have been translated into English. The themes of the Japanese novels are far more grisly and violent than those of the more genteel Anglo-Saxons. Dismemberment
1025-635: The Yellow Room ), written in 1907 by French journalist and author Gaston Leroux . G. K. Chesterton 's Father Brown stories, beginning in 1911, often featured locked-room mysteries. In the 1920s and 1930s, many authors wrote locked-room mysteries, such as S. S. Van Dine in The Canary Murder Case (1927), Ellery Queen in The Chinese Orange Mystery (1934), and Freeman Wills Crofts in such novels as Sudden Death and The End of Andrew Harrison (1938). Pulp magazines in
1066-517: The adaptation was never completed, though there were revived plans underway to do so at the time of Reamy's death in late 1977. Anthony Boucher William Anthony Parker White (August 21, 1911 – April 29, 1968), better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher ( / ˈ b aʊ tʃ ər / ), was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas . Between 1942 and 1947, he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for
1107-562: The cases solved by Judge Dee is an example of the locked-room subgenre. The genre continued into the 1970s and beyond. Bill Pronzini 's Nameless Detective novels feature locked-room puzzles. The most prolific creator of impossible crimes is Edward D. Hoch , whose short stories feature a detective, Dr. Sam Hawthorne, whose main role is as a country physician. The majority of Hoch stories feature impossible crimes; one appeared in EQMM every month from May 1973 through January 2008. Hoch's protagonist
1148-550: The ground in 1949 and saw it take hold solidly by 1950. This was a major creative challenge and although I was involved in a lot of other projects, I stayed with F&SF into 1958." Throughout his years with the magazine, Boucher was involved in many other projects. He wrote fiction for the SF and mystery markets (primarily short stories). He taught an informal writing class from his home in Berkeley. He continued his Sunday mystery columns for
1189-539: The long-running Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction anthology series, from 1952 to 1959. Among Boucher's critical writing was also contributing annual summaries of the state of speculative fiction for Judith Merril 's The Year's Best SF series; as editor, he published the volumes in E. P. Dutton 's The Best Detective Stories of the Year annual volumes published in 1963–1968, succeeding Brett Halliday and followed, after his death, by Allen J. Hubin in that task. Boucher's first short story saw print when he
1230-612: The most prolific with 16 novels. Edgar Faure , who later to become Prime Minister of France, also wrote in the genre, but was not particularly successful. During the Golden Age of Detective Fiction , English-speaking writers dominated the genre, but after the 1940s there was a general waning of English-language output. French authors continued writing into the 1950s and early 1960s, notably Martin Meroy and Boileau-Narcejac , who joined forces to write several locked-room novels. They also co-authored
1271-464: The novel as "a rip-snorting, bloody, imitation-Norse epic containing all the elements of faerie". E. F. Bleiler , commenting on the 1971 revised edition, declared that "The first portion of this novel is perhaps the finest American heroic fantasy , with good characterizations, excellent surface detail, good plotting, and an admirable recreation of the mood of the Old Norse literature. But the story ends in
The Broken Sword - Misplaced Pages Continue
1312-442: The original 1954 edition, Moorcock criticized the revised 1971 text, stating that the revised edition "weakened" the novel. Diana Paxson stated that reading The Broken Sword as a teen "changed [her] life", and led to her involvement in fantasy as a genre. The original 1954 text is known for its unique prose styling which makes liberal use of archaic words, spellings and phrasings. Examples include spelling "fairy" as " faerie ",
1353-413: The royal sceptre, which is bound to have disastrous consequences for the king. The British TV series Jonathan Creek has a particular 'speciality' for locked-room-murder style mysteries. The eponymous protagonist, Jonathan Creek, designs magic tricks for stage magicians, and is often called on to solve cases where the most important element of the mystery is clearly how the crime was committed, such as
1394-528: The same year, was one of the first winners of the MWA's Edgar Award for his mystery reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle . He was a founding editor (with J. Francis McComas ) of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1949 to 1958, and attempted to make literary quality an important aspect of science fiction. He won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Magazine in 1957 and 1958. Boucher also edited
1435-553: The word " glaive " in place of "sword", and archaic phrasing such as the word " will " in place of "want". The 1971 revised text frequently replaces and at times altogether removes some of these stylings. Author Poul Anderson explained these alterations in the introduction to the 1971 edition, referring to his younger self in the third person: A generation lies between us. I would not myself write anything so headlong, so prolix, and so unrelievedly savage. This young, in many ways naive lad who bore my name could, all unwittingly, give readers
1476-481: Was a mix of hard work and great fun.") With respect to his scripting of the Sherlock Holmes radio dramas, Nigel Bruce , who played Dr. Watson, said that Boucher "had a sound knowledge of Conan Doyle and a great affection for the two characters of Holmes and Watson." Boucher left dramatic radio in 1948, "mainly because I was putting in a lot of hours working with J. Francis McComas in creating what soon became The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction . We got it off
1517-601: Was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the best science fiction short stories of all time. As such, it was published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929–1964 . Boucher was the friend and mentor of science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick and others. His 1942 novel Rocket to the Morgue , in addition to being a classic locked room mystery ,
1558-543: Was born in Oakland, California , and went to college at the University of Southern California . He later received a master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley . After a friend told him that "William White" was too common a name, he used "H. H. Holmes" to write and review mysteries and "Anthony Boucher" for science fiction and fantasy. He pronounced Boucher phonetically, "to rhyme with voucher". Boucher (as he
1599-625: Was fifteen years old in the January 1927 issue of Weird Tales . Titled "Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie," it was the only story to appear under his real name, William A. P. White. Boucher went on to write short stories for many pulp fiction magazines in America, including Adventure , Astounding , Black Mask , Ed McBain's Mystery Book , Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine , Galaxy Science Fiction , The Master Detective , Unknown Worlds and Weird Tales . His short story " The Quest for Saint Aquin "
1640-532: Was more commonly known) wrote mystery, science fiction, and horror. He was also an editor, including science fiction anthologies, and wrote mystery reviews for many years in The New York Times . He was one of the first English translators of Jorge Luis Borges , translating " The Garden of Forking Paths " for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine . He helped found the Mystery Writers of America in 1946 and, in
1681-598: Was named third in that same poll; Hake Talbot 's Rim of the Pit (1944) was named second. ) Three other Carr/Dickson novels were in the top ten of the 1981 list: The Crooked Hinge (1938), The Judas Window (1938), and The Peacock Feather Murders (1937). In French, Pierre Boileau , Thomas Narcejac , Gaston Boca, Marcel Lanteaume, Pierre Véry , Noel Vindry, and the Belgian Stanislas-André Steeman were other important "impossible crime" writers, Vindry being