Cleveland Langston Moffett (1863-1926) was an American dramatist. He was born in New York and spent many years as European correspondent to New York newspapers. Many of his works are set in France. He was the originator of the 'mysterious card' shaggy-dog-story.

Mike Grost on Cleveland Moffett

Moffett's Through the Wall (1909) was described by Ellery Queen as "a neglected high spot". Both parts of this description seem accurate. It is a good book, and seems to have not many literary offspring. One suspects not many people have ever even read it, let alone been influenced by it, although it was known to Dorothy L Sayers, as well, who has Lord Peter Wimsey praise it in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928).

Moffett's novel is set in 1907 Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent, and is rich in period atmosphere. It is long (400 pages) and leisurely, and filled with humor, melodrama, Great Detectives and master villains, and everything else one can think of. It is also a genuine detective story, with a complex, admirable plot. There is less emphasis on "playing fair" with the reader, and on deduction in obtaining the solution, than in Freeman or later Golden Age writers, however. Moffett does excel, however, at the gradual uncovering and unveiling of the truth behind the mysterious situation through detective work, a skill he could have learned from Anna Katherine Green, or other early writers. His detective is named Paul Coquenil, recalling Émile Gaboriau's Parisian detective Lecoq.

The sheer size of Wall, together with the complexity and tremendous variety of the scope of the plot, gives one an "oceanic" feeling, of being involved in a large world where anything can happen. Wall changes its "scale of focus" many times, in a way different from most Golden Age detective novels. It contains everything from the minute examination of physical clues, to complex struggles of political intrigue, from personal attacks on its detective hero, to puzzle plots and scientific detection. At the end one feels that one has lived through a complex experience, one that involves many pauses for reflection, and several gradually dawning new perspectives and points of view.

Toward the end, Moffett makes a sudden detour into "scientific detection", and introduces an early version of both the lie detector and the word association test. He does this with his usual vivid storytelling, and eye for almost surrealistic detail. Both of these devices are used by McHarg & Balmer. Did he influence McHarg & Balmer - or vice versa? It would be interesting to find out. I have seen references to non-fiction articles of the period on such devices; perhaps both independently drew on such non fiction accounts.

Through the Wall makes an interesting contrast with Crofts' The Cask (1920); it shows the romantic's Paris, while The Cask shows the businessman's Paris. Oddly enough, there is plenty of excitement and even romance, too, in The Cask; the two books are complimentary.

Moffett is perhaps best known today for a pair of riddle stories, "The Mysterious Card" (1896) and its sequel, "The Mysterious Card Unveiled". Both were collected into a single small book - the stories together don't add up to 50 pages. The first story describes a series of sinister, hard to explain events that overtake the hero when he is given the card. The events are catastrophes, and leave the hero feeling persecuted. Unfortunately, at the end of the tale, none of the mysterious events in the story are explained. The sequel gives an explanation, but it is couched in the sort of paranormal phenomena that show up on The X-Files. Anyone who reads these stories as a mystery is going to feel cheated. Both the paranormal theme and the paranoia in the plotting will seem immediately familiar to anyone who watches The X-Files, and the story could easily be an episode of that show, even though it was written 100 years ago. There are thematic links between the Card stories and Through the Wall, although they cannot be discussed without giving away their plots.

While "The Mysterious Card Unveiled" involves the paranormal, the events in the much better first story, "The Mysterious Card", are completely naturalistic. Looking at "The Mysterious Card" just by itself, without reference to the sequel, the plot elements form a mystery without a solution. In theory, this mystery could be given a naturalistic solution, although Moffett does not do so. I have always believed that the events in "The Mysterious Card" are so extreme, that it is hard to imagine any solution being created for them. However, the modern writer Edward D. Hoch came up with a reasonably plausible explanation of them in his "The Spy and the Mysterious Card" (EQMM, October 1975), an imaginative feat.

The Bishop's Purse (1912), written with Oliver Herford, is misleadingly billed in its reprint edition as "a mystery story". It has crime elements - one of the characters is a lady thief - but there are no mysterious events for the reader or a detective to solve. Mainly, it is what used to be called a "clerical romance" - a good humored, genteel, slightly comic tale of adventures among the British clergy and their relatives. This genre used to be popular in Edwardian England; Victor Whitechurch wrote numerous such novels. The lady thief's attempts to steal a purse filled with money the Bishop has raised for charity form only one plot thread here, among romances, comedy and stock market manipulations by big businessmen, the last also a popular fiction subject in the early 1900's. This uninspired book shows little of Moffett's talents.

Bibliography

True Tales from the Archives of the Pinkertons (1897)

Through the Wall (1909)

The Bishop's Purse (1913) with Oliver Herford

The Seine Mystery (1925)

The Mysterious Card (1896)