DORIS MILES DISNEY – Room for Murder

Macfadden 75-448; paperback, 2nd printing, October 1971; 1st printing, Macfadden 60-392, April 1969. First Edition: Doubleday/Crime Club, 1955.

   Explain this to me, if you can. Doris Miles Disney, while very popular in her day – and I’ll get back to that in a minute – and I haven’t checked to see how true this is for her other books, but at least the one I have here in my hand has all but vanished from the Internet marketplace. I find only six copies for sale, including none of the hardcover edition, ranging in price from $16.81, including shipping, to $34.49. The cheapest one, by the way, will be coming from the UK, if you were to order it.

    I don’t know whether it’s low supply or high demand, but what on earth is going on? It’s a good book, but by no stretch of the imagination is it a great one. It’s also very much not typical of books being written today, and that’s something else I’ve have to get back to.

   But in terms of describing Mrs. Disney’s popularity, here’s a list of her books, as taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

  DISNEY, DORIS MILES (1907-1976) US editions only; series characters and settings included:

* A Compound for Death (n.) Doubleday 1943 [Jim O’Neill; New England]
* Murder on a Tangent (n.) Doubleday 1945 [Jim O’Neill; Connecticut]
* Dark Road (n.) Doubleday 1946 [Jeff DiMarco; New England]
* Who Rides a Tiger (n.) Doubleday 1946 [Connecticut]
* Appointment at Nine (n.) Doubleday 1947 [Jim O’Neill; Connecticut]
* Enduring Old Charms (n.) Doubleday 1947 [Massachusetts]
* Testimony by Silence (n.) Doubleday 1948 [Connecticut; 1880s]
* That Which Is Crooked (n.) Doubleday 1948 [Connecticut; 1898-1946]
* Count the Ways (n.) Doubleday 1949 [Connecticut]
* Family Skeleton (n.) Doubleday 1949 [Jeff DiMarco; Connecticut]
* Fire at Will (n.) Doubleday 1950 [Jim O’Neill; Connecticut]
* Look Back on Murder (n.) Doubleday 1951 [New England]
* Straw Man (n.) Doubleday 1951 [Jeff DiMarco; Connecticut]
* Heavy, Heavy Hangs (n.) Doubleday 1952 [New England]
* Do Unto Others (n.) Doubleday 1953 [New England]
* Prescription: Murder (n.) Doubleday 1953 [New England]
* The Last Straw (n.) Doubleday 1954 [Jim O’Neill; Connecticut]
* Room for Murder (n.) Doubleday 1955 [Connecticut]
* Trick or Treat (n.) Doubleday 1955 [Jeff DiMarco; Connecticut]
* Unappointed Rounds (n.) Doubleday 1956 [David Madden; Connecticut]
* Method in Madness (n.) Doubleday 1957 [Jeff DiMarco; Connecticut]
* My Neighbor’s Wife (n.) Doubleday 1957 [Connecticut]
* Black Mail (n.) Doubleday 1958 [David Madden; Connecticut]
* Did She Fall or Was She Pushed? (n.) Doubleday 1959 [Jeff DiMarco; Rhode Island]
* No Next of Kin (n.) Doubleday 1959 [Connecticut]
* Dark Lady (n.) Doubleday 1960 [Connecticut]
* Mrs. Meeker’s Money (n.) Doubleday 1961 [David Madden; Connecticut]
* Find the Woman (n.) Doubleday 1962 [Jeff DiMarco; Connecticut; Maine]
* Should Auld Acquaintance (n.) Doubleday 1962 [Connecticut]
* Here Lies (n.) Doubleday 1963 [Connecticut]
* The Departure of Mr. Gaudette (n.) Doubleday 1964 [Connecticut]
* The Hospitality of the House (n.) Doubleday 1964 [New York]
* Shadow of a Man (n.) Doubleday 1965 [Connecticut]
* At Some Forgotten Door (n.) Doubleday 1966 [Connecticut; 1886]
* The Magic Grandfather (n.) Doubleday 1966 [Connecticut]
* Night of Clear Choice (n.) Doubleday 1967 [Connecticut]
* Money for the Taking (n.) Doubleday 1968 [Connecticut; Vermont]
* Voice from the Grave (n.) Doubleday 1968 [Maine]
* Two Little Children and How They Grew (n.) Doubleday 1969 [Connecticut]
* Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate (n.) Doubleday 1970 [Virginia]
* The Chandler Policy (n.) Putnam 1971 [Jeff DiMarco; Connecticut]
* Three’s a Crowd (n.) Doubleday 1971 [Virginia]
* The Day Miss Bessie Lewis Disappeared (n.) Doubleday 1972 [Virginia]
* Only Couples Need Apply (n.) Doubleday 1973 [Connecticut]
* Don’t Go Into the Woods Today (n.) Doubleday 1974 [Connecticut]
* Cry for Help (n.) Doubleday 1975 [Virginia]
* Winifred (n.) Doubleday 1976 [Virginia]

    Did you spot the book from Putnam in there? I don’t know how or why that happened. It otherwise seems like a long and production relationship with Doubleday, one that lasted for nearly 35 years.

    For some basic biographical data, one online source says briefly of the author:

Doris Miles Disney (22 Dec 1907-9 Mar 1976) insurance employee, social agency publicist.

   For the long version, you can learn more here. (This webpage comes from doing a search in Google books, so you may have to repeat the search.) If you were to have gathered from the locale of many of her stories that she may have been from Connecticut, you would have been correct. She was born in Glastonbury, two towns over from me.

   Of her series characters, Jim O’Neill is a Connecticut county detective; Jeff DiMarco is an insurance investigator; and David Madden is a US postal inspector. From all accounts, Mrs. Disney began her career writing traditional detective stories, but began writing suspense thrillers that grew progressively darker as the years went on. Even so, a dose of comedy could often be found in her mysteries as well.

   Case in point, the book in hand, the only one of the above that I’ve read in, say, 30 years or so, making it the only one I can talk about with more than vague generalities. I won’t say I laughed out loud while reading it, but if intermittent chuckling counts, this is a funny book. There are some noirish qualities to it as well – by which I do not mean to say hard-boiled in any way, shape or form – far from it – but behind the walls of the rooming house where the book is centered there’s a definite sense of uneasiness that never quite goes away.

Room for Murder

   Running the rooming house are two spinster sisters named Aggie and Kate, Irish through and through, and who argue and quarrel with each other nearly all day long, or at least whenever they’re in the same room together. Nonetheless, having spent their lives together so far, the reader can tell that they could never live apart. Their niece Teresa has lived with the two women for most of her life and is now of marriageable age, but to her aunts’ ever growing frustration, she shows no signs of finding a suitable man to marry, or wishing to.

   There are other relatives, and of course there are the boarders, some of them long-term and some relatively new, and all have their own particular eccentricities, shall we say. It is one of the more recent roomers who is found dead after coming home after what appears to have been a long night of drinking. Suicide is the verdict of the local (Somerset, Connecticut) police department. Aggie, who reads true crime magazines, is not so sure, and surprisingly enough, ventures out on a long trip from home alone to prove it.

    I have not mentioned Dennis Callahan yet. He is one of the policeman called to the scene of the roomer’s death, and while he is there, he and Teresa immediately catch each other’s eye, much to the two sister’s displeasure. A mere policeman, he is, even though he has a solid Irish name – and there’s a story behind that as well.

   The case itself is complicated, and unfortunately, to my own personal regret, most of the detection takes place offstage. On the other hand, Mrs. Disney doesn’t pull any punches. As cozy and light as the banter in the rooming house is, there is a villain that is as nasty as any you will find in many other much tougher venues. It’s a clever mix that I found both unusual and, well, delightful.

— February 2007