FREDERICK C. DAVIS – Another Morgue Heard From. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1954. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, Jan 1955. Digest-sized paperback reprint: Bestseller Mystery B192 (abridged), no date stated [1956]. Published in the UK by Victor Gollancz, 1955, hc, as Deadly Bedfellows as by Stephen Ransome.

   In response to an appeal from a boyhood friend, Luke Speare, of the Cole Detective Agency, goes to Lake Haven in an unknown state to investigate he knows not what. Under protest, his boss, Schyler Cole, always uncomfortable outside of New York City and demanding the noisiest hotel room in the small town so he will be able to get to sleep, accompanies him.

   Speare’s friend is running a political campaign and has been receiving anonymous phone calls about some major problem. But is the problem political or personal? The friend won’t say, the friend’s estranged wife lies and tries to get Speare and Cole to return to New York, and then murder occurs.

   At one point Cole says: “Every woman is a special case, all right, and that’s for sure. Everyone of them thinks of herself as an exception, and what’s more she is.” The politician’s wife fits this description, and without her silence two murders and an attempted murder would not have taken place.

   A good investigation here, though not strictly fair play. Most enjoyable is Cole, who heads the two-man agency of which Speare is the brains. Cole would have pulled out of this investigation early on if he hadn’t been afraid he’d lose Spear and have to start doing some work himself.

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

         SCHYLER COLE and LUKE SPEARE:

       o The Deadly Miss Ashley (n.) Doubleday 1950.

       o Lilies in Her Garden Grew (n.) Doubleday 1951.

       o Tread Lightly, Angel (n.) Doubleday 1952.
       o Drag the Dark (n.) Doubleday 1953.

       o Another Morgue Heard From (n.) Doubleday 1954.
       o Night Drop (n.) Doubleday 1955.