Fri 20 Jan 2017
A 1001 Midnights Review: CHARITY BLACKSTOCK – Dewey Death.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[4] Comments
by Kathleen L. Maio
CHARITY BLACKSTOCK – Dewey Death. William Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1956. London House & Maxwell, US, hardcover, 1958. Ballantine U2125, paperback, 1964.
Charity (a.k.a. Lee) Blackstock’s first mystery remains one of the best library mysteries ever published. For London’s Inter-Libraries Despatch Association, the biggest scandal had always been the frequent and imaginative typos (e.g., “Law of Tarts”) by the typing pool on request forms. That is, until the evil-minded office busybody, Mrs. Warren, is found with her neck broken, spilling out of a book sack.
Despite the investigation led by a Scotland Yard detective, and a second murder, Dewey Death cannot be classified as a classic detective story. It isn’t even a puzzling mystery. Readers, along with various characters, become increasingly aware of the murderer’s identity. This does not, however, lessen the suspense or interest of Blackstock’s novel, which is a masterful mixture of romantic fantasy and harsh realism.
With a good deal of humor, the author weaves her suspense plot well through the interplay of day-to-day office life. The heroine (like Blackstock under another pseudonym) is an author of historical romances. When she becomes smitten with a dashing co-worker, she soon learns just how dangerous and disruptive a swashbuckling antihero can be in real life.
Like traditional whodunit writers, Blackstock studies the effects of murder on a small, insular community. But her library locale and her unusual characters are portrayed with a depth unequaled by most of her contemporaries.
Charity Blackstock created several other excellent suspense novels — The Woman in the Woods (1958) and The Foggy, Foggy Dew (1959) are good examples — before turning to romance fiction more than a decade ago.
———
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.
January 21st, 2017 at 8:48 pm
I’ve had a copy of the Ballantine paperback for a long time, and being fond of libraries, I’ve always meant to read it.
I still may, but after reading this review and learning that the puzzle is not the thing, I have to admit, if only to myself, that the chances have gone down.
January 22nd, 2017 at 9:28 pm
A great favorite among writers and books. She was a staple of my reading list and should be revisited.
January 22nd, 2017 at 10:14 pm
I can always change my mind!
January 17th, 2019 at 4:08 pm
Another Mystery*File Review of this book: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=13068