Sun 12 Jan 2014
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: PAT McGERR – Pick Your Victim.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
William F. Deeck
PAT McGERR – Pick Your Victim. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1946. Dell #307, mapback, no date [1949]. Macfadden, paperback, 1970.
An unusual mystery in that the murderer is known but the victim is not. Pete Robbins is in the Marines, stationed in the Aleutian Islands. In a package received by one of his friends is a partial clipping from a newspaper stating that Paul Stetson, managing director of SUDS — Society for the Uplift of Domestic Service — had strangled an executive of the company and had confessed to the murder.
The clipping does not provide the victim’s identity. Robbins, who worked for SUDS before his induction in the service, relates the happenings at the company for his Marine friends so that they can have a lottery on which executive was murdered.
The potential victims number ten. Each, from the history that Robbins relates, has given Stetson reason to kill him or her, even his best buddy from childhood.
McGerr has done a fine job portraying the denizens of SUDS, some of whom are competent but all of whom have their own views of and goals for the organization. The characters’ flaws, the internecine battles, and the Washington politics are handled superbly. The mystery is a good one and well worth seeking out.
NOTE: This book was previously reviewed on this blog by Marv Lachman. Check out his comments here. My own review of Follow As the Night includes a career perspective of the author, Pat McGerr.
January 12th, 2014 at 9:02 pm
This was one that lived up to everything I had heard about it.
I only knew McGerr from her Selena Mead stories in THIS WEEK and the one Mead novel, so I was knocked over by this one, maybe the only ‘who was it done to’ in the genre — certainly the best.
January 12th, 2014 at 11:42 pm
If I were asked to put together a list of my top ten or twenty mystery stories, I don’t think I’d remember to put this one on it, but when I’m reminded of it, such as when I came across this old review of Bill’s, I can’t imagine it not being there.
January 13th, 2014 at 4:46 pm
Have to admit it isn’t a book that I think of until I hear the name and think how good it is. For some reason I have the same problem with LAURA, book and movie. There are others some better known some less. I always forget to put Stanley Ellin’s THE EIGTH CIRCLE on lists of the best private eye novels too.