THE GREAT MERLINI was not the only magician-detective created by the versatile Clayton Rawson (1906–1971). Under the Stuart Towne pseudonym, he produced four novelettes in 1940 about Don Diavolo, who sometimes performs as the Spanish Sorcerer, other times as the Scarlet Wizard. He tells a few friends that his real name is Nicola Alexander DeKolta, and they call him Nick but suspect that’s not his real name either since it is made up of the names of three great illusionists of the past.
These stories were produced for a short-lived pulp magazine, Red Star Mystery Magazine, which ran for only four issues (June, August, October, and December 1940). The first two adventures, “Death from the Past” (originally published as “Ghost of the Undead”) and “Death from the Unseen” (originally “Death Out of Thin Air”), were published in book form as Death Out of Thin Air (1941). The second two, published as “Act I” (originally “The Claws of Satan”) and “Act II” (originally “The Enchanted Dagger”), were collected in a rare paperback volume, Death from Nowhere (1949). All four novellas and several additional short stories were collected in The Magical Mysteries of Don Diavolo (2005).
In addition to being a professional magician, illustrator, and writer, Rawson was an accomplished editor, serving as the editor of True Detective Magazine, Unicorn Books, Simon & Schuster’s Inner Sanctum mystery imprint, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine from 1963 until his death.
“Death Out of Thin Air” was first published in the August 1940 issue of Red Star Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in book form as “Death from the Unseen” in Death Out of Thin Air (New York, Coward-McCann, 1941).