JUNE TRUESDELL – The Morgue the Merrier. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1945.

   When mystery writer John Grover and his new bride, Lee, arrive at the house in Tree-Top Glen, apparently in Los Angeles, where they are to spend their honeymoon, the door is blocked by a body whose hand is the only part that can be seen. Moments later the body vanishes. Then a woman is murdered in one of the bedrooms, stabbed through the heart and with her throat slit.

   Grover and Lee call upon Julius Gilbert, criminologist not detective, who is five feet two inches tall, with two hundred pounds of tummy. (I suspect that Lee, the narrator, is exaggerating.) Muttering oracularly and managing to postpone the consummation of the marriage, Gilbert clears things up in a semi-fair-play novel after only one more murder.

   Those who like frenetic married-couple types should enjoy this one. While the characters are a bit extreme, as is the plot, in spite of these objections I am keeping an eye out for Truesdell’s later pair of novels, according to Hubin not featuring Gilbert or the Grovers, in which she may have exhibited a little more authorial control.

  Bibliography:     [Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

TRUESDELL, JUNE (1918?-1996?)

        The Morgue the Merrier (n.) Dodd Mead, 1945.
        Be Still, My Love (n.) Dodd Mead, 1947. Film: The Accused, 1949.
        Burden of Proof (n.) Boardman, UK, 1951

GERALDINE BONNER – The Castlecourt Diamond Case. Funk & Wagnalls, hardcover, 1906. (“Published, December, 1905.”) First appeared in Ainslee’s Magazine, November 1905. Currently available in several different Print On Demand editions. Online edition: http://archive.org/details/castlecourtdiamond00bonnrich

   This is the second version of this review, In the first, employing suitable modesty, I credited myself with the discovery of Geraldine Bonner, an entertaining but (or so I thought) entirely forgotten writer. Having stated that Bonner is unknown, I then belatedly checked my facts … and I found that five years ago Kathi Maio praised another book by Bonner, The Black Eagle Mystery (1916), in Murderess Ink.

   Such are the perils of research.

   Ms. Maio says that Black Eagle is “a charming mystery” — a phrase that also describes Castlecourt Diamond. The story of the theft of the Marchioness of Castlecourt’s diamonds is told in six “statements.” The first, by the Marchioness’ maid, describes the theft, introduces the main characters, and mentions the two detectives, one official, one private.

   The second section is narrated by “Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as Laura the Lady.” It’s not much of a surprise that Laura stole the diamonds, though whether she was acting for someone else is not yet clear.

   On the whole, however, the mystery is primarily a vehicle for Bonner to produce a comedy of manners, and the interest in the second part is Laura’s successful attempt to plant the diamonds on an unsuspecting American couple, Cassius and Daisy Kennedy. The Kennedys have been courting London society (they already know “a bishop and two lords”) and thus can’t throw out Laura and her henchman when, pretending an invitation, they arrive for dinner.

   Two parts of the story are statements by the Kennedys, detailing their schemes to rid themselves of the diamonds and culminating in the theft of the jewels by a seeming sneak-thief. John Burns Gilsey, a private detective engaged by Lord Castlecourt, narrates a section that explains his deductions pointing to the Marchioness as the instigator of the plot, but the book concludes with a statement by the Marchioness showing that Gilsey was only partly correct.

   The Castlecourt Diamond Case is indeed charming, and it is made even more so by its brevity — with large type and margins it contains less than 30,000 words, a far cry from many Victorian and Edwardian detective novels, as anyone who has labored through, say, Lawrence Lynch’s novels with their 550 godawful pages will testify.

   I can’t claim to be the discoverer of Geraldine Bonner, but I’m happy to join Kathi Maio in recommending her works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:   [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

       GERALDINE BONNER (1870-1930). Born in Staten Island, N.Y.

The Castlecourt Diamond Case (n.) Funk 1906.
The Girl at Central (n.) Appleton 1915 [Molly Morganthau (Babbits)]
The Black Eagle Mystery (n.) Appleton 1916 [Molly Morganthau (Babbits).]
Miss Maitland, Private Secretary (n.) Appleton 1919 [Molly Morganthau (Babbits)]
The Leading Lady (n.) Bobbs 1926.
-Taken at the Flood (n.) Bobbs 1927.

Hi Steve,

   W. B. M. Ferguson’s dates are given everywhere, including Crime Fiction IV, as 1881-1967. The birth is correct according to the Irish births registration, but I have now found in the English National Probate Calendar the death of a William Blair Morton Ferguson on 12 January 1958 in Londonderry.

   I have told Allen Hubin as it seems unlikely there are two people of that name, though one never knows.

   But, as I have said, as the 1967 death is given everywhere, I wonder if you could mention this to see if anyone can provide more information. It would also help to spread the word of that incorrect date – if it is incorrect.

   Many thanks

               John

      BIBLIOGRAPHY     [Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

FERGUSON, W(illiam) B(lair) M(orton) (1881-1967); see pseudonym William Morton; Born in Belfast.

* *The Big Take (Long, 1952, hc) [U.S.]
* *-Black Bread (Long, 1933, hc)
* *The Black Company (Jenkins, 1925, hc) [New York] Chelsea, 1924.
* *Boss of the Skeletons (Long, 1945, hc) [New York City, NY; 1920 ca.]
* _The Clew in the Glass (Chelsea, 1926, hc) See: The Clue in the Glass (Jenkins 1927).
* *The Clue in the Glass (Jenkins, 1927, hc) [U.S.] U.S. title: The Clew in the Glass. Chelsea, 1926.
* *Crackerjack (Long, 1936, hc) Film: Gainsborough, 1938; released in the U.S. as Man with 100 Faces (scw: A. R. Rawlinson, Michael Pertwee, Basil Mason; dir: Albert de Courville).
* *Dog Fox (Long, 1938, hc)
* *Escape to Eternity (Long, 1944, hc) [Dan Cluer; New York City, NY]
* *The Island of Surprises (Long, 1935, hc)
* *London Lamb (Long, 1939, hc)
* _The Murder of Christine Wilmerding (Liveright, 1932, hc) See: Little Lost Lady (Hurst 1931), as by William Morton.
* *Other Folks’ Money (London: Nelson, 1928, hc) Chelsea, 1926.
* *Phonies (Long, 1951, hc) [New York City, NY; U.S. West]
* _The Pilditch Puzzle (Liveright, 1932, hc) See: The Murderer (Hurst 1932), as by William Morton.
* *Prelude to Horror (Long, 1943, hc)
* *The Riddle of the Rose (Jenkins, 1929, hc) [New York] McBride, 1929.
* *Sally (Long, 1940, hc)
* *The Shayne Case (Long, 1947, hc) [Dan Cluer; New York City, NY]
* *Somewhere Off Borneo (Long, 1936, hc)
* *The Vanishing Men (Long, 1932, hc)
* *Wyoming Tragedy (Long, 1935, hc) [Wyoming]

MORTON, WILLIAM; pseudonym of W. B. M. Ferguson, (1881-1967)

* *The Case of Casper Gault (Hurst, 1932, hc) [Police Commissioner Kirker Cameron; *Insp. Daniel “Biff” Corrigan; New York]
* *The Edged Tool (Chelsea, 1927, hc)
* *Little Lost Lady (Hurst, 1931, hc) [New York] U.S. title: The Murder of Christine Wilmerding, as by W. B. M. Ferguson. Liveright, 1932.
* *Masquerade (London: Nelson, 1928, hc) [*Insp. Daniel “Biff” Corrigan; New York] Chelsea, 1927.
* *The Murderer (Hurst, 1932, hc) [*Insp. Daniel “Biff” Corrigan; Police Commissioner Kirker Cameron; New York City, NY] U.S. title: The Pilditch Puzzle, as by W. B. M. Ferguson. Liveright, 1932.
* *The Mystery of the Human Bookcase (Hurst, 1931, hc) [*Insp. Daniel “Biff” Corrigan; Police Commissioner Kirker Cameron; New York City, NY] Mason (U.S.), 1931.

ELIZABETH BACKHOUSE – Death Came Uninvited. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1957.

   You can find unusual items on eBay, and for me, this is one I recently ended up winning. My copy is a rather shabby ex-library edition which cost me perhaps a pound, plus double that for shipping from England.

   Elizabeth Backhouse, the flap of the jacket says, is a young Australian writer, and this is her first novel. This sends me to Al Hubin’s [Crime Fiction IV] almost immediately, mostly out of curiosity to see if she ever wrote another.

   And indeed she did. Here are all her books of crime fiction, at least, in chronological order:

         Death Came Uninvited. Hale, 1957. [Inspector Christopher Marsden]
         The Mists Came Down. Hale, 1959.
         The Web of Shadows. Hale, 1960. [Inspector Prentis]
         The Night Has Eyes. Hale, 1961. [Inspector Marsden]
         Death of a Clown. Hale, 1962. [Inspector Prentis]
         Death Climbs a Hill. Hale, 1963. [Inspector Prentis]

   Inspector Marsden is her English policeman, while Inspector Prentis, about whom I know nothing else, is Australian. It may be that Ms. Backhouse’s story-telling techniques took on extra dimensions as she continued to write, but in at least her first book, we see and follow Marsden when he’s on the job, and nowhere else, so as it turns out, I know very little about him as well.

   No wife, girl friend, no home life, nothing at all except — it’s not much, but it will have to do — he does have a dog, one who follows his master around with him as he interviews suspects and follows clues. The dog’s name is Spodge, which sounds terribly authentically British to me.

   In pure pulp fashion, you might say — not the hard-boiled Hammett stuff — but the gentleman-adventurer-slash-drawing-room sort of tale, the murderer kills his first victim using a sealed envelope filled with ammonia, leaving a calling card for the crime, signed “The Uninvited.”

   And so the pursuit is on. There are lots of suspects in an increasingly complicated plot, but what Marsden and his men failed to do, it seems to me, is to ever ask the question, “Why such a complicated means to do murder?” and “Why did the murderer feel that he was uninvited?”

   Or, where is Ellery Queen when we need him? As for me, I let Marsden and his men do all of the legwork, I concentrated on the second question (the first one has no answer), and I worked out the entire solution before any of them.

   I don’t brag. I only tell it how it is. The case is still entertaining, save for a small amount of muddled telling toward the end, and I could see why. The author was trying to keep the surprise ending up her sleeve for as long as she could, and there wasn’t nearly room enough for her to maneuver.

THOMAS BLACK – Four Dead Mice. Rinehart & Company, hardcover, 1954. Bantam #1448, paperback, 1956, as Million Dollar Murder.

   I’m going to change things around from the way they usually occur here, not just a little, but from top to bottom. Instead of a complete list of Thomas [B.] Black’s private eye Al Delany character at the end of this review, here they are at the beginning:

      The 3-13 Murders. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1946.

      The Whitebird Murders. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1946.

      The Pinball Murders. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947.

      Four Dead Mice. Rinehart & Co., 1954.

   There are are only the four of them, and why the gap, and why the abrupt end to the series, I do not know. I’d welcome any information that you might have. According to Al Hubin, Thomas Black was born in Kansas in 1910, with a possible death date of 1993, not confirmed. (Information on hand as of the current Revised Crime Fiction IV.)

   I’m sure I’ve read at least one of the first three, but it was so long ago, I’ll not rely on memory, and I’ll report on only this one. It takes place in Chancellor City, an small metropolis with more than its share of alleys, back streets, rundown housing and a wide-open red light district. I had the feeling that it might be St. Louis, in disguise, or Kansas City, perhaps, but that’s only a guess, and it’s probably not relevant anyway.

   Delany is asked by a bakery to find out who might have dropped some dead mice into a vat of bread dough, and the case escalates from there to include the death of a job applicant who flunked an employment check, and more.

   The dialogue is bright and chipper and slangy, and maybe some of the slang makes the book unreprintable today. For example, S.Q.Q. stands for? San Quentin Quail, if that helps any, and that’s what Delaney knows what Honey Ward is, a precocious young girl (in ways also probably unreprintable today) who grabs his attention early on and doesn’t let go.

   Here’s an early scene that doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, and Cora Collins doesn’t appear again, but I liked the flavor it provided:

   From a little later on, from page 37, this excerpt is getting closer to the plot:

   With other characters involved named Delight (a big nut-brown colored hairpin, handsome as sin and better proportioned), “Baggy Pants” Vance, Bam Carson, George Washington Hite, Little Phil Murio, and a hophead named Sleepy-Sleep, this reads like a cross between Damon Runyon and Harry Stephen Keeler, with triple the coherency of the latter, thanks to numerous recaps and timetables and lists of questions that haven’t have been answered yet.

   I’m not so sure about the ending. I wish Black had pumped up the descriptions of some of the characters earlier on, to give them the presence they needed to fit the roles they were designed to play — and I’m not (necessarily) referring to the killer(s). As it is, it’s solid detection on the run, winging it as it goes, and cramming it all in to fit (for the most part) until the number of pages runs out.

[UPDATE] 02-10-12.   I’m sorry to say that this is all I remember of this book. If I hadn’t written the review, I wouldn’t even be able to tell you where the four dead mice came in. I think this is a positive review, however. I’ve convinced myself I ought to read the book again, next time I get the chance.

C. ST. JOHN SPRIGG – Death of an Airman. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1935. First published in the UK: Hutchinson, hardcover, 1934.

   Fortunate it is for the minions of the law that Edwin Marriott, Bishop of Cootamundra, Australia, is in England on leave and wants to learn how to fly. For it is he who spots an anomaly when the flight school’s principal instructor expires after his plane crash: rigor mortis never sets in.

   A delayed post-mortem uncovers a bullet wound in the dead man’s head. It can’t be suicide. It also cannot be murder since the pilot was flying alone and no other plane was seen in the area.

   Scotland Yard Inspector Bernard Bray, one of Sprigg’s continuing characters, is called in to assist in the investigation. Even he can’t puzzle out the absence of rigor in the corpse, though he does get on the trail of drug smugglers and peddlers (yes, young people, like sex, this was not something invented in your generation).

   With the help of the Bishop, Bray and the locals break up the drug ring and finally figure out how the deceased pilot met his fate in an entertaining novel that provides some interesting information about the early days of flying.

   BIBLIOGRAPHY:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

SPRIGG, C(hristopher) ST. JOHN. 1907-1937.

   Crime in Kensington (n.) Eldon 1933 [Insp. Bernard Bray; Charles Venables] US title: Pass the Body. Dial, 1933.
   Fatality in Fleet Street (n.) Eldon 1933 [Charles Venables] No US edition.
   Death of an Airman (n.) Hutchinson 1934 [Insp. Bernard Bray]
   The Perfect Alibi (n.) Eldon 1934 [Charles Venables; Insp. Bernard Bray]
   The Corpse with the Sunburnt Face (n.) Nelson 1935. US title: The Corpse with the Sunburned Face. Doubleday, 1935.
   Death of a Queen (n.) Nelson 1935 [Charles Venables] No US edition.
   The Six Queer Things (n.) Jenkins 1937.

Editorial Comments:   There is a longer biography of Sprigg on the Golden Age of Detection Wiki, along with a photo.

   A challenge I might present to you I’m sure I would win is to have you collect all of the books above, or try to. I do not believe you could do it. If you have a collection already, you must have put it together some 40 years ago or more. At one time the US editions of his books were relatively common, but no more, especially in jacket. (The one shown above came from a Sun Dial reprint.)

   As to this particular book, I’ve had a copy since forever, but I’ve never read it. I do wish that Bill Deeck had commented on how clever the “impossible crime” aspect was. At the moment, all it is is a tease.

JACK IAMS – A Shot of Murder. William Morrow, hardcover, 1950. Dell #722, paperback, 1953.

   When a young American woman, Nita Romaine — a night club singer — disappears in Eastern Europe, recently married reporter “Rocky” Rockwell of the Riverside, Ohio Record manages to talk his editor into sending him and his bride to Europe in order to look for her — the missing woman’s fiancé being a local man.

   It isn’t long before Rocky realizes that someone doesn’t want him to be successful. A man mistaken for him is thrown over the side of the ocean liner transporting them, and efforts are made in Paris to get him entangled with the French police.

   Rocky is helped in Paris by Mrs. Pickett, the paper’s society columnist but is forced to go to Poland alone (though an attractive French woman with reasons of her own for going to Poland attaches herself to him) and continue his search.

   From reading the dust jacket, I gather that this was the third book in a series in which Mrs. Pickett was the lead character. Mrs. Pickett is something of a Rosalind Russell type. In this book, however, Rocky is definitely the major character.

   If I were to compare this with another series I would say it was entertaining in the same way that Manning Coles’ Tommy Hambledon novels are entertaining. Lightweight fluff, that is, a pleasant read, but about as realistic as a three dollar bill.

   One wonders how big a city Riverside, Ohio, is and how a local paper can afford to pay to send a reporter and his wife gallivanting through Europe.

Bibliography:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

JACK IAMS, 1910-1990.

   The Body Missed the Boat (n.) Morrow 1947.

   Girl Meets Body (n.) Morrow 1947.

   Death Draws the Line (n.) Morrow 1949.

   Do Not Murder Before Christmas (n.) Morrow 1949 [Rocky Rockwell; Amelia Pickett]

   What Rhymes with Murder? (n.) Morrow 1950 [Rocky Rockwell; Amelia Pickett]

   A Shot of Murder (n.) Morrow 1950 [Rocky Rockwell]

   Into Thin Air (n.) Morrow 1952.
   A Corpse of the Old School (n.) Gollancz 1955 [Amelia Pickett]

Editorial Comments:   Al seems to have missed Amelia Pickett as a character in A Shot of Murder. Perhaps her role was small, but I’ll still send him a note to make sure he knows. It’s interesting to see that Iams’ last book, another Amelia Pickett novel, was never published here in the US.