THE ARMCHAIR REVIEWER
Allen J. Hubin


JOHN McALEER – Coign of Vantage; or, The Boston Athenaeum Murders. Foul Play, hardcover, 1988. No paperback edition.

   After a biography and bibliography of Rex Stout, after studies of Emerson, Thoreau and Dreiser, after a Korean War novel, a professor of English at Boston College offers his first mystery novel. This is John McAleer, and his debut is Coign of Vantage.

   The scene is first the Cat-Tail Club, a rarefied Boston literary society, three of whose members, vastly aged, have recently died. No matter their age, the odor of fish is detected, and Austin Layman, by no means a member but able to keep up his conversational end as if he were, is invited to have a look.

   The scent leads to the Boston Athenaeum, august gentleman’s library, where apparently for innocent repose for forty years have lain scandalous manuscript pages now capable — wonder of wonders — of exciting passions, even murder, in geriatric literary breasts.

   Full of sprightly dialogue, fabulous characters, and wit is this novel, and much to be pleasured, with only some weakness at the end to be regretted.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier,
       Vol. 11, No. 3, Summer 1989.


Bibliographic Note:   This is John McAleer’s only entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.