Sun 29 Dec 2013
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: BERT & DOLORES HITCHENS – F. O. B. Murder.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
William F. Deeck
BERT & DOLORES HITCHENS – F. O. B. Murder. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1955. Permabook M-3051, paperback, 1956.
For those readers who enjoy police procedurals and others who just enjoy good books, this first novel by the combined Hitchens is recommended.
David McKechnie and Collins (whose first name I missed, if it was ever mentioned) are investigators for an unnamed railroad. Collins is of mixed Irish and Mexican parentage. McKechnie is described as Black Irish, which, for those like me who might be baffled by the term — I went through a lot of books before I discovered its meaning — is an Irishman who has lost his Faith and is a solitary and brooding man. McKechnie, under that definition, would be more Grey Irish, in my opinion, but let it go.
Collins specializes in stolen-or-missing-baggage cases. He is just beginning an investigation of the disappearance of two pieces of luggage belonging to a very strange woman when he discovers a terrified wetback locked In a reefer (refrigerator car) and near death.
McKechnie meanwhile is checking on some whiskey stolen from a boxcar and then is drawn into the case of a man who everyone thought was a hobo who had died from, apparently, a fall from a boxcar. The death had been dismissed as an accident. The hobo, however, turns out to own half a uranium mine (backward reels the mind), and the FBI is also interesting itself in the incident. Another death, possibly in connection with the whiskey thefts, comes later.
Not surprisingly, all of these cases tie in with each other, but the authors are skillful enough to make it sound reasonable. McKechnle and Collins work with the FBI and the Los Angeles police force and arrive at a satisfactory conclusion when the interconnectedness of the incidents has been pointed out to them by their supervisor. All they discuss with each other is horses and women.
Bibliographic Note: McKechnie and Collins appeared in one other novel by the Hitchens, that being The Man Who Followed Women (Doubleday, 1959).
December 29th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
My family is Black Irish, a term traditionally used to describe those with black hair as opposed to more common Celtic coloring.
A rather fanciful explanation claims that such are the descendants of the Spanish sailors who managed to make it to Ireland after the Armada was sunk.
December 29th, 2013 at 2:57 pm
Sorry, meant to add a link.
http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/Who-were-the-Black-Irish-92376439.html
“Another theory of the origin of the term ‘Black Irish’ is that these people were descendants of Spanish traders who settled in Ireland and even descendants of the few Spanish sailors who were washed up on the west coast of Ireland after the disaster that was the ‘Spanish Armada’ of 1588.”
December 29th, 2013 at 8:25 pm
Black Irish is definitely the Spanish influence, both traders and primarily the survivors of the Armada hidden from the British.
This is one of my favorite Hitchens novels, and there are quite a few. They are too little known today (like Ben Benson), and wrote entertaining police procedurals that were also good mysteries and above all entertaining reads. I suppose there were so many good writers at that point they ended up overlooked, but that is by no means something that shouldn’t be corrected.
The Hitchens are well worth the effort to find.
December 30th, 2013 at 10:45 am
I read most of the Hitchens novels and enjoyed them all.
December 30th, 2013 at 1:15 pm
Bert Hitchens wrote only five crime novels, all in collaboration with wife Dolores. I haven’t read any of those, and I should have, but I’ve read many that Dolores wrote under her own name only, and as by Dolan Birkley, Noel Burke & D. B. Olsen. As the latter in the 1940s, she wrote a long series of “cat” oriented books with Rachel and Jennifer Murdock as the leading characters. Also as Olsen she wrote six books with Professor Pennyfeather as the primary detective. She then seemed to switch with considerable ease to writing police procedurals and medium to hardboiled mysteries in the 50s and 60s.
December 30th, 2013 at 1:21 pm
For Bill Deeck’s take on one of the Murdock mysteries, CATS DON’T SMILE, check out
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=4612