THE BACKWARD REVIEWER
William F. Deeck


THE GORDONS – Campaign Train. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1952. Bantam 1475, paperback, 1956; Popular Library, paperback, no date stated, both as Murder Rides the Campaign Train.

   A hopeful assassin rides the campaign train of Gov. Wallace X. Martin, candidate for the presidency. Worse, Martin’s No. 2 secretary, 19-year-old Jackie Moxas, whom he has rescued from a correctional institution, is looking for the assassin in order to lend him (or her) her support. No good deed goes unpunished, someone has rightly contended.

   Moxas despises the governor for what he once did and is now doing to her. all of which is imaginary. When she discovers who the assassin is, her views begin to change.

   Not a sympathetic character, Moxas, but convincingly drawn by The Gordons are the political background and the campaign.

— Reprinted from MYSTERY READERS JOURNAL, Vol. 6, No. 3, Fall 1990, “Political Mysteries.”