Judith Ware (1905–1967)

Features series character Eric Hazard

Interesting and intermittently effective yarn about a mysterious beast roaming the woods near a quarry. First a bloody hat is found, then a gruesomely slaughtered dead dog is literally thrown on a doorstep and finally the body of a missing man turns up with horrible wounds to his face, a bashed in head and his hands cut off at the wrists. Two more people die – one in a similar fashion to the handless corpse, one shot – before the beast is discovered and the murderer is confronted. At one point the detective tells the narrator that he knows the beast is a griffin and the narrator (along with the reader) think he means the mythical half eagle/half lion. But it is not until the final pages we are told what he really meant and why the murderer was hiding such a beast near the quarry. Solution hinges on a scientist whose very strange research went haywire and led to all the bloodshed. Easily qualifies as an "impossible crime" but is not listed in Robert Adey's bilbiography Locked Room Murders… (mere)