Detective Novels

A detective novel is a work of fiction or of literature but also something like a crossword puzzle and I cannot solve those either. Having read Chapters I-VI of the XXI in Poul Anderson's San Francisco-based Murder Bound (New York, 1962), all that I can deduce so far is:

that the gangster who has tried to intimidate Yamamura had been supplying homosexual prostitution to the disappeared man;

that the reticent, Russian-learning, anti-Nazi suspect will turn out to be a Communist.

But why did the disappeared man give himself away as a Nazi collaborationist just before the fracas that led to his disappearance? And why has one of the witnesses been "haunted" by an axe-wielding figure in his hotel room? I confidently expect never to answer these questions before Yamamura elucidates them in the final chapter.

Anderson conveys the sense of a mystery at sea and also something of the ethos of the sailors' country, Norway.