Wed 18 Aug 2010
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: LENORE GLEN OFFORD – The Glass Mask.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[8] Comments
by Susan Dunlap:
LENORE GLEN OFFORD – The Glass Mask. Duell Sloan & Pearce, hardcover, 1944. Paperback reprint: Dell #198, mapback edition, 1947.
Lenore Glen Offord is one of the truly underrated writers of the World War II and postwar periods. Her characters are engaging and true to their times and environments.
Her heroine, Georgine Wyeth, is the forerunner of today’s feminists — a single mother supporting her daughter with short-term jobs, forcing herself to deal with her fears, to stand up for herself, insisting all the time that she’s tired of being saved.
Most of Offord’s books are set in Berkeley or other areas of northern California. She excels in portraying the uniqueness of the university town and the wartime atmosphere — the paranoia as well as the desperate excitement.
Although she deals more with innocent romantic situations than is stylish now, every seeming digression into a character’s personal life is relevant to the plot.
In The Glass Mask, the chief responsibility for detection shifts from Georgine Wyeth to pulp writer Todd McKinnon, though the story is told from Georgine’s viewpoint. Todd, Georgine, and Georgine’s eight-year-old daughter stop off in a Sacramento Valley town to satisfy his curiosity about a family mystery: Did Gilbert Peabody hasten the death of his ailing grandmother in order to inherit her house and thus be able to afford to marry?
There is no proof, only verdict by rumor. Unable to face the innuendo, Gilbert has enlisted in the army and gone, leaving his wife to deal with the townsfolk and the more unpleasant relatives.
By varying means, she tricks and inveigles the McKinnon-Wyeth menage into staying on day after day to investigate the nocturnal footsteps in the attic, the family patriarch who rants and feigns seizures, and the mystery of what the old lady got from the bank the day she died and where she hid iit.
This is an entertaining tale, and one of Offord’s best. Georgine Wyeth is also at her most appealing in Skeleton Key (1943), in which she investigates the murder of a wartime air-raid warden during an unexpected blackout.
Unfortunately, Offord’s output was not great: merely eight mysteries, four other adult books, and a juvenile. Especially good among the other mysteries are Murder on Russian Hill (1938), The 9 Dark Hours (1941), and The Smiling Tiger (1951).
———
Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
Editorial Comment: Some additional bio-bibliographical information on Lenore Glen Offord follows the review preceding this one, that of The Smiling Tiger, written by Bill Deeck.
August 18th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
It is interesting to see that Susan Dunlap points out that Georgine Wyeth is the heroine of the books in this series, while Hubin and others refer to them all as “Todd McKinnon” books.
August 18th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
Todd does the detective work, a bit like Jeffrey McNeil in Theodora DuBois books or some of Eric Heath’s heroines, but Georgine is the point of view character — thus the HIBK elements — though more active than mere Watson and a bit more intuitive. Quite a few women mystery writers (and a few men) had husband and wife teams where the actual detection was done by the husband while the wife was primarily there to be in danger at the finale.
The inclusion of a child is fairly unusual though, as is Georgine being a widow and the child not Todd’s. Off hand I can’t think of any other husband and wife teams where the kids — if any — played a role in their adventures until Ellis Peters Felse series where the whole family took a shot at detection over the course of the books.
I’d be interested if anyone can think of a series from this general era — even into the sixties — where a husband and wife team had children and the children played a role in their investigations (in later years both John Appleby and Roderic Allyen’s kids did a bit of detection). The North’s had cats, but that doesn’t count, not even when they are as precocious as the North’s cats.
August 19th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Not only were children of married detectives not heard nor even seen, I think you’re right. They didn’t even exist. The Felse series is the earliest one I can think of, other than Georgine’s daughter.
Anyone else?
August 19th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Steve
I came up with one post Felse exception, Elizabeth Peters Amelia Peabody and Emerson and their son Ramses (and adopted children), but that is about it. Some married sleuths like Gideon, Roger West, the Lone Wolf, Wexford, Appleby, Allyen, and even Peter Wimsey (in a short story) have kids, but among the husband and wife teams I don’t recall even a pregnancy scare. Even Agatha Christies Tommy and Tuppence don’t have kids that I recall.
Most of the married sleuths didn’t have kids either — not even Reggie Fortune, whose books often dealt with crime involving children.
I guess it was hard to write the sort of blithe slightly screwball vein of sexy married sleuths with diapers trailing from a clothes line, and it is hard to imagine Pam North missing a cocktail party to pick up junior at kindergarten.
August 19th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Josephine Bell’s doctor detective, David Wintringham, and his wife have children in the late thirties. I think they are teenaged or near so by The Summer School Mystery (1950) and are definitely heard. A doctor and sole income earner in her family after her doctor husband was hit and killed by a car around 1936, Bell also had three children, so no doubt she was including real life experience in her books.
The fate of the Thin Man film series after the introduction of the baby suggests to me that generally mystery children are better avoided. Though Craig Rice’s Home Sweet Homicide does remarkably well, doesn’t it?
August 19th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Curt
Thanks for mentioning Wintringham. I thought of him but couldn’t recall his name and didn’t want to look it up.
Originally children didn’t fit in with the whole bright young things at the cocktail party aspect of the Thin Man and its imitators , but by the mid fifties and early sixties that was playing less a role even in the North’s adventures and you might have thought one of the writers of married sleuthing teams might have been tempted by children — especially in the domestic fifties. I don’t even think Herbert Reniscow’s late entry the Gold’s have kids — not even grown ones.
Below a quick list of at least some married sleuths with kids:
Lord Peter Wimsey (appearing in one short story)
Michael Lanyard, the Lone Wolf
John Appleby
Roderick Allyen
Roger West
George Gideon
Blackshirt (though his son never appears in the original series there is at least a SON OF BLACKSHIRT)
Inspector Wexford
Dr. David Wintringham (thanks, Curt)
Amelia Peabody
George Felse
Nero Wolfe (well, he doesn’t have a wife but his daughter does show up)
Richard Hannay
Dirk Pitt (which is cheating, they show up full grown and he never knew about them)
James Bond (he has a son by Kissy Suzuki who he ‘married’ in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE)
Charlie Chan
Issac Sidel
Inspector Carby (though his son Mick is actual hero of the series)
Carl Peterson has Irma who may be his daughter and or his mistress
Napoleon Bonaparte
Henry Gamage
Fu Manchu
Travis McGee (lost daughter syndrome)
Fletch
Inspector Linnott (Jean Stubbs)
There are a few I’m not sure of, who might have offstage children (not heard or seen, W.C. Fields favorite kind), but in general detective works seems to have been an effective form of birth control. Maybe it was all those martinis. And of course there is that mysterious disappearing family of Ellery Queen’s mentioned in the forward to THE ROMAN HAT MYSTERY and never heard from again.
August 20th, 2010 at 4:04 am
Dr. Priestley is a widower with a daughter, April, who plays a role in the first Priestley mystery. By the second one she is off visiting friends, then isn’t mentioned again for 27 years (long visit!), only in passing, then not again. I think Street rightly decided that Dr. P. was not likely to be the father of a flapper and silently tore April out of the calendar of his months, don’t know why he had that odd lapse and mentioned her again in 1953.
Inspector French seems to have had a son killed in WW1 and a daughter as well, but Crofts himself forgot that he had given French children and never mentioned them again.
The Coles’ Superintendent Wilson was married with children, but the children are almost never mentioned.
Punshon’s Bobby Owen married Olive Frensham (?) and she appears a good bit, but they didn’t have kids. Ditto Miles Burton’s Desmond Merrion.
Connington’s Clinton Driffield was unmarried. So was his “Counsellor” and Inspector Ross, I believe.
Henry Wade’s Inspector Poole never married, which always seemed odd to me, given the character.
Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs. Bradley, thrice widowed, had several grown sons, as I recall, as well as nephews and nieces, who appear off and on in the books (and her Watson, Laura, later married and had children).
Reggie Fortune and Joshua Clunk were married, but I don’t recall kids.
Lorac’s Macdonald seems to have had no sex life whatsoever (I know Julian Symons would be appalled).
Anthony Wynne’s Dr. Hailey wasn’t married, was he?
Not a lot of kids there! Of course the classical idea of the Great Detective was someone less encumbered by those human passions. Even after love and wives came along I think kids tended to be avoided, because there was more of a feeling then that children and murder don’t mix.
August 20th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Curt
Thanks for Mrs. Bradley. I thought she had kids but couldn’t remember for certain. I don’t recall Dr. Hailey being married, but she might have been like Dr. Fell’s wife, seldom mentioned or seen.
As you say the whole thing about children went against the concept of the Great Detective, but the tradition continues today to some extent — which is understandable in private eyes and secret agents, but seems a little out of place among many cozies and others.
There is a funny scene in Elizabeth Peters most recent Vikki Bliss mystery when her boyfriend retired jewel thief John Smith walks in an finds her knitting booties. It’s one of the few times I can recall the subject even coming up.
I think the subject of their being childless comes up once or twice in the Maigret books.
We got a lot of Luis Mendoza’s domestic life, but I can’t recall if he had kids. In general the police procedural heroes tended to be married, but I don’t recall many kids being mentioned.
Did Mrs. Pollifax have children? I don’t recall them in the books, but they could have been offstage. Rabbi Small didn’t have kids either, did he?
I forgot about Priestley’s daughter.
Reggie Fortune was a child — or at least pretty child like in a lot of ways, but considering how many of the books deal with children and issues involving children it is odd that Reggie and his wife seem to have none of their own.
Sspper had Bulldog Drummond’s wife Phyllis remark in one book that she keeps his ugly face around to amuse the children, but there is no other mention of children and whether she means they have children is a bit of a mystery. Richard Hannay had a son Peter John who gets to be a hero himself in ISLAND OF SHEEP. I don’t think any of Dornford Yates heroes, Berry and Boy, Jonah and Chandos have children though most of them are happily married and or widowed (save for Jonah, and who could live with him?).
I understand the reason many of the early heroes had no children, but you wonder why it persists today even in situations where having a child or two would seem a natural enough touch in otherwise domestic settings.
Oddly, Greg Rukka’s secret agent Tara Chaze does have a child as does his hero Atticus Kodiak, but they are still the exception.