“Mr Harstein sticks to his story. After binding and gagging him, the loquacious Salem Spook flapped his arms, flew about like a bird and then soard straight out the fifth story window of the hotel.”

It has barely been a week since Dr Klotz, the head of Criminology at the local university, helped trap the Spook, who promptly escaped from prison and then died in a train wreck, the secrets of how he committed his crimes dying with him. But now , as Klotz helps to debunk some spiritualists, the Spook seems to have escaped death itself.

As the Spook seemingly appears and disappears at will, Klotz decides to make sure that he is indeed dead. But when the coffin is dug up and unsealed, not only is the Spook’s body still there, on his finger is a ring – a ring stolen from Klotz the previous night. But the coffin has been in the ground for a week…

Into Thin Air is the only novel written by Horatio Winslow and Leslie Quirk. Winslow was the author of multiple short stories for magazines, but this is the only novel that he, with the help of Quirk, produced. It is mentioned by Robert Adey in his Locked Room Murders book as one of the early important works in the genre. Now we can’t always trust reference books – ”savorless tripe” indeed – but my good blogging buddy JJ, a specialist in locked room mysteries, jokingly asked me recently if I had a copy of this as he was desperate to read it. So when decided on a little trip to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, I thought I’d give this one a go.

There’s a lot going on here – the focus is on Alden T Nollins (Nolly), another investigator of psychic phenomena as he encounters all sorts of oddness. It’s not quite as jam-packed as, say, Rim Of The Pit or Death From A Top Hat, but it’s not far off. There are the exploits of the Spook to explain, as well as the various happenstances that occur as the narrative progresses, including a locked room murder.

As the events proceed, there’s the added puzzle of who exactly is going to solve it? Klotz? Nolly? One of Nolly’s love interests, a journalist? A former conjuror? It adds another layer to the mystery itself, which I should say resolves itself very well.

Some of the impossible feats of the Spook are sort-of dismissed with an explanation with a bit of detail followed by “and then they fell for it” but these aren’t dwelled on. What is impressive the overall “what the hell is going on?” aspect of the story with what I thought a very well-considered solution. Some of the characters admittedly do behave as if they’re in a novel rather than real life in what they are willing to accept and what actions they are willing to undertake, but let’s be fair – they are in a novel. Oh, and we get a Hollow Man-esque lecture on the types of character you find in a mystery novel – I guess the authors are leaving it to the reader to match up which character in the story matches with each type from the lecture.

What baffles me most is why this one hasn’t been reprinted. This has a reputation amongst collectors and it’s a deserved one. It can sit alongside such novels as The Hollow Man and deserves to be out there. Start pestering the American Mystery Classics range now…