LESLIE FORD – By the Watchman’s Clock. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1932. Pocket #33, paperback; 1st printing, 1940. Popular Library 50-440, paperback, 1960.

LESLIE FORD By the Watchman's Clock

   I ended my previous review, that of Susan Moody’s Penny Dreadful [reviewed here ], with a quote. Let me start this one with another one, this one taken from the book’s first couple of paragraphs:

   In the little town of Landover, the most important thing is Daniel Sutton. Landover College is the next most important. Landover, like the rest of Maryland, measures everybody and everything by two yardsticks. One is Money and the other is Age. The conclusion is inevitable. Daniel Sutton is disgustingly rich and the college is exceedingly old. Some people might dispute the matter of priority. There are Marylanders who believe that age is more important than money, but as a rule they are held to be prejudiced. There’s certainly no doubt in the minds of practical people that it would be better to be rich as Daniel Sutton than to be as old as Landover College.

   As a matter of fact, to give credit where credit is due, Daniel Sutton has done more for himself than Landover College has done for itself.

LESLIE FORD By the Watchman's Clock

   As a prologue, it sets the stage for the rest of the book in exact, precise fashion. In fact, if I were to tell you who the murder victim is to be, I don’t think that there is any way in the world that you would be surprised. With its old-fashioned, Southern aristocratic background, you could easily imagine, I’m sure, that there would be very few similarities between this book and the one with Penny Wanawake (modern, British, young, tall, black) as its leading character.

   But you might be wrong if you did, and I’ll get back to that in a minute. One way that times have changed, though, is that the heroine who narrates Leslie Ford’s story, Martha Niles, a wife of one of the college’s professors, simply takes for granted the role that blacks have in the world. She would be utterly amazed at the possibility of a series of mysteries solved by a stunningly beautiful young black woman. To her credit, she seems intelligent enough that maybe it wouldn’t surprise her, after all. On the other hand, “black” is certainly not the word she ever uses. Other characters use worse.

LESLIE FORD By the Watchman's Clock

   The mystery in this book is cluttered by all sorts of “if I had only known”s, failures to follow through on even the most obvious hints and clues — when the murder occurs there seems to be absolutely no understanding that a fatal shooting is a matter for the police, and that no one should wander off right afterward — and silence on the part of many to protect someone else is seldom a good idea.

   One similarity between this book and the previous one is the failure in each to bring the killer to conventional justice. The omission is even greater in this book, because I don’t believe the victim is as despicable as the one in Susan Moody’s book.

   Daniel Sutton’s “crime” is only that he is rich, and the money he is hoarding could be used for better purposes. Although Martha Niles is one of the few people who actually likes him, even she seems to be content with the way the book ends.

   I enjoyed the first 28 chapters, but the key to how well you like a mystery novel lies in the 29th chapter, not the first 28. It’s too bad. Given the time, the place and the era, the characters are described well, and they behave according. The book couldn’t be reprinted, but as a slice of an earlier America, it is, in its way, even better than the mystery.

— Reprinted from Mystery*File 31,
       May 1991 (slightly revised).