Tue 5 Sep 2017
Archived Mystery Review: D. B. OLSEN – The Cat Saw Murder.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[13] Comments
D. B. OLSEN – The Cat Saw Murder. Rachel & Jennifer Murdock #1. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1939. Dell #35, paperback, mapback edition, no date stated.
Although this is the second case for Lt. Mayhew, his first being The Clue in the Clay (Phoenix Press, 1938), this is the book that introduced Rachel Murdock (and only briefly in this one, her sister Jennifer) to the world of mystery fiction. And for someone who’s 70 years old, Rachel is active and agile, with a sharp, inquisitive mind.
It’s her niece whom she’s come to visit, and her niece who is the victim of bloody murder, with a whole rooming house full of suspects. And of course there is a cat. The whole story is told with gaps and holes, however, and it’s all muddled up in grand old fashion.
[PLOT WARNING] And it’s the gaps and holes that I’ll be discussing from this point onward, and while I don’t intend to tell you whodunit, I am going to tell you more details of the plot than I would if this were a more ordinary review. Let’s go point by point:
(1) I suppose one cat could be switched with another, and the owner would never be able to tell the difference right away, but it doesn’t seem likely to me that such a masquerade could be pulled off for very long. On page 126, at any rate, Miss Rachel expresses doubts to Lt. Mayhew that her cat Samantha is really the cat she’s always had. “No,” she told him slowly. “I’m not sure.” End of chapter.
Whether or not she could be taken in by somebody else’s cat, when the next chapter begins, this small piece of the plot is totally ignored — no questions, no immediate followup, no anything — and it’s page 208 before it’s brought up again, when Rachel decides to test the possibility that the cat’s fur has been dyed.
(2) The same kind of maneuver takes place at the end of Chapter 17. Miss Rachel is questioning Clara, a small girl who lives in the house, and Clara says she knows “Something happened the night the lady died.” She won’t tell Rachel, though, not until she’s promised a kitty of her own. End of chapter.
The next chapter begins, nothing is mentioned, and it isn’t for another 20 pages that Miss Rachel decides to get serious about it. Then she promises Clara a kitty, and they all discover that the girl saw someone leaving the dead woman’s apartment that night with a bloody axe in her hand. This is not what I call terrific detective work.
(3) Mayhew is not really a slouch as a detective, since he did get alibis from everyone in the house immediately after the murder — and it was pretty good work to establish that it was an inside job so quickly — but then why does it take him until page 235 to start cross-checking those alibis, and then until page 244 before he starts out on the footwork needed to verify them?
(4) I don’t understand this one at all. On page 118 he sets up a trap for the killer with a girl he is starting to get sweet on. “I’ll be watching,” he tells her on the same page. On page 127, he’s woken up from his vigil to find Sara in the process of being strangled in the room across the hall. He taps gently on the door and asks, “Is everything all right” The girl’s half dead, and he’s tapping gently on the door.
(5) In Chapter 16 the girl’s mother tries to commit suicide. Why? I don’t know. She’s rescued in the nick of time, and the matter’s never mentioned again.
(6) The man across the hall from the murdered woman has disappears, but Mayhew finds a note with the word CAVES written on it hidden inside a shoe. Does he suspect that there are caves in the area where the man will eventually be dug up? Nope. Is that where he’s found? Yep.
(7) You’re going to think I’m screwy, but I enjoyed the book anyway, and I’d read the next in the series any time at all. You figure it out.
Bibliographic Notes: Lt. Stephen Mayhew appeared in seven of D. B. Olsen’s detective novels, five of them overlapping the mystery adventures of Rachel and Jennifer Murdock, who appeared together in 13 novels between 1939 and 1956, all of which featured cats in the title.
As for D. B. Olsen, she may be better known today under her real name, Dolores Hitchens, which starting in 1952 she used as the byline for 20 later novels, sometimes in tandem with her husband Bert, that were not nearly as cozy as the Olsen books were.
September 5th, 2017 at 11:05 am
I read this book circa five years ago. Thought it was terrible.
Steve documents its plot problems well.
In addition, I thought the writing and storytelling were poor. I’m used to reading classic mystery writers who are expert story tellers. This book was the exact opposite.
Have read a couple of the Dolores Hitchens titles too. Thought they were bad.
Dolores Hitchens has a good reputation, praised by a number of expert mystery historians. But actually reading her books is a rough trip.
September 5th, 2017 at 11:23 am
I’d have to read this one again to have any hope of answering the question I raised in my point seven.
I tore the plot to shreds and yet I said I enjoyed the book and I’d gladly read another.
If not the plot, then it must have been the characters that caught my fancy, but since I didn’t go into that part of the book more than I did, at this point in time, I can’t tell you for sure that that’s the case, either.
As Olsen as well as Hitchens (plus a couple of other pen names) the author was very popular for well over two decades.
September 5th, 2017 at 5:36 pm
In defense of Dolores Hitchens:
Mike Grost presumes to judge this writer’s worth based on one weak early novel (the one Steve reviewed) and a “couple of the Dolores Hichens” books, the titles of which he doesn’t provide, that he considers “pretty bad.” Shortsighted and unfair. Certainly Hitchens, like every prolific writer of crime fiction, Dame Agatha included, produced a few clunkers throughout her long career (some of the “cat” cozies, mainly), but when she was good, she was very good indeed. And that’s not just my opinion. Her books regularly received favorable notices from Tony Boucher, among others, and have been praised by knowledgeable modern critics as well.
One of her novels under her own name, FOOL’S GOLD, was among the eight mysteries selected by editor Sarah Weinman for her well-regarded WOMEN MYSTERY WRITERS OF THE 40s & 50s. SLEEP WITH SLANDER is arguably the best traditional male private eye novel written by a woman. The five novels she co-authored with her second husband, Bert, are among the finest of all authentic train-themed mysteries.
She wrote many different types of books (including one well above average western) and was not afraid to tackle difficult themes and controversial (for the day) subject matter.
Pretty bad? On the contrary, and on balance, Dolores Hitchens was a better writer than 90% of her contemporaries, both genders.
September 5th, 2017 at 6:06 pm
Bill Pronzini knows much more about mystery fiction than I do.
And I’m not trying to pick a fight with someone I admire.
I’ve never read FOOL’S GOLD or SLEEP WITH SLANDER. And should.
I thought SLEEP WITH STRANGERS was mediocre. Don’t remember it well, though.
FOOTSTEPS IN THE NIGHT is grotesque and repulsive. The bizarre treatment of child molestation is weird beyond belief. Didn’t like the portrait of disability either (teenager with clubfoot), although it is not as bad as the man who might have a Lolita-complex.
And the writing level of FOOTSTEPS IN THE NIGHT is gosh awful. It is like low level hackwork. Trying to read this or THE CAT SAW MURDER is just not a fun experience, as story telling.
All writers are uneven. But Ellery Queen, Helen McCloy and Mary Roberts Rinehart never ever wrote mysteries this bad.
IIRC THE CAT SAW MURDER has an Evil Lesbian stereotype as a villain. Hitchens’ view of sexuality grates on me horribly.
Only read one of the train novels series. Think it was END OF THE LINE. Read a long time ago. Found it mediocre, but better than these other books.
I agree that four novels is not enough to pass judgment on an author. Hence, I have no section on Hitchens in my web site. Still I’ve tried and tried and am 0-4 on Hitchens.
Is it so awful for someone who has actually read four novels to say that he did not enjoy them?
September 5th, 2017 at 7:27 pm
I have no intention of picking a fight, either. But I stand by what I wrote above. If Mike Grost disliked four of Hitchens’ books, then of course he’s entitled to say so. But she wrote more than 40 novels, and I still think it’s unfair to label her as mediocre or worse on the basis of four titles read. (I confess to disliking some of the Queen novels — Ellery is an insufferable prig in the early books — and I didn’t care for any of the three Mary Roberts Rinehart books I slogged through, but I would never presume to infer that EQ or Rinehart were inferior writers on the basis of my personal taste.)
Mike’s comments on FOOTSTEPS IN THE NIGHT are eyebrow-lifting. Grotesque and repulsive? Gosh-awful writing? Very harsh judgments, those. I had no such negative reactions when I read it; in fact I thought it was a pretty decent suspense novel, no less well written than any of her other books. The editors at Cosmopolitan Magazine must have thought so, too: they bought and published a condensed version back in the good old days when mystery novels were considered slick magazine fare.
September 5th, 2017 at 10:14 pm
I have to agree with Bill Pronzini that four novels is an inadequate sample to judge a writer as prolific as Hitchens.
I have similar troubles and dilemmas not just with Hitchens, but many other “crime writers who wrote realistic crime novels after 1950”. This whole school is emphatically not to my taste. Usually I’ve read a handful of books, disliked them, and had no desire to read more. Yet my sheer ignorance of their body of fiction as a whole has prevented me from writing anything about their books on my web site.
These comments are the first and only thing I’ve ever written on Hitchens. This might be just as well! And maybe even these comments are a “bridge too far”.
I have to agree that studying an author systematically and as a whole is the best way to study them. And I sure haven’t done that with Hitchens.
September 5th, 2017 at 10:47 pm
My own assessment of Hitchens was always to admire her high rate of professionalism, and skill. Individual books varied, but “consummate pro” is a phrase I felt comfortable using about her work.
Tastes vary, I’m not a big Helen Reilly fan, but as with Hitchens I recognize the strengths that made her successful and enjoy some titles.
I think I only made it all the way through one Rinehart (THE MAN IN LOWER 10), and I confess Carolyn Wells defeats me as did Lee Thayer, but I do recognize and make note of their success and impact on the genre.
Many of the writers mentioned sold far more books than my “favorites” and while there are cases where I question the public taste, in general I have to admit writers I don’t personally like still provided readers with something I missed.
I look at the genre more as a historian than a critic. Because of that I try to see what it was readers respond to in any writers work (and don’t always succeed).
In Hitchens case I had no problem seeing her strengths and enjoying them. To me she was someone who penned a few books that are sadly neglected, not “classics” in that sense, but good books which are rare at anytime.
September 5th, 2017 at 11:19 pm
Well said, David. Looking back at all of years of reviewing I’ve done, I can’t say I ever had an overall philosophy behind what I was doing. Except on rare occasions, I never thought of myself as a critic, only expressing myself in terms of how much I enjoyed a book, or didn’t, and either way, tried to say why.
But I like to think that maybe I’ve tried to put writers into some kind of context too, not exactly as a historian, but as you say, hopefully trying to see why some authors are popular, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy their work.
I’ve also been a big fan of obscure authors, those that perhaps wrote only one or two books before disappearing, wondering why they wrote them and even if obscure, if they had something unique to say.
And sometimes they do.
Something like panning for gold where no one else is looking.
September 6th, 2017 at 6:37 am
As far as the implausibility of the “switched cat” possibility, what about a woman switched with her doppelganger, which goes undetected by:
1. The woman’s brother
2. Her lover, who doesn’t notice that her breasts have apparently returned, remarkably, after a double mastectomy. Granted, the latter guy was very drunk at the time, and he did notice “something different.”
According to my wife, this is part of an ongoing story line on DAYS OF OUR LIVES.
September 6th, 2017 at 12:38 pm
It’s not on any more, but there was for a long time a soap opera called Another World. It sounds as though it never went away!
September 8th, 2017 at 12:05 am
I side with Bill here. I have enjoyed everything I have read by Hitchens in all her writing personae. I had no real problem with this book. My only criticism of THE CAT SAW MURDER was an odd grammatical shift in tense in the first portion of the book which I wrote about in my blog piece. As far as plot inconsistencies or loopholes, I am one of the few readers of mysteries who does not pick apart a book based on its plot alone. Most of what I read in crime fiction prior to the 1970s still belongs to the world of fantasy, not realism. I’m more willing to accept outrageousness and plot inconsistencies because this is fiction.
I think Hitchens is truly one of the most under appreciated of mystery writers from her era. She has a polished style, one that I would never call “gosh awful”. Look at my review of SOMETHING ABOUT MIDNIGHT for examples of what I think is very good writing indeed. I’ve quoted several passages in my blog piece. Often she exhibits a keen insight into human behavior. I like that she never shies away from what others may consider “repulsive.”
Crime is not pretty. If you are too afraid to read about the dark nature of humanity in all it’s ugliness and grotesquerie, then maybe you shouldn’t be reading crime fiction.
BTW, there was no “Evil Lesbian” in THE CAT SAW MURDER. In fact, an obsession with housecleaning is the prime giveaway clue to the murderer’s identity. Hardly “evil lesbian” territory. I have no idea what Mike Grost is talking about when he mentions Hitchens’ “view of sexuality.” I’m turned off by blatant anti-gay sentiment and have often criticized writers who indulge in that prejudice. In Hitchens’ books I find nothing like that.
September 8th, 2017 at 5:44 am
BIG SPOILERS. Let’s talk about the killer in THE CAT SAW MURDER.
This will reveal all the details of the mystery’s solution.
The woman killer is revealed in a scene where she is wearing a man’s uniform (Chapter 20). She is dressed as a chauffeur, and everyone thinks she is really a man (end of Chapter 19). Only when she takes off her cap and her long hair spills out does she have any feminine characteristics. She becomes a “transgressive” fusion of someone who looks mainly male but is female.
Lesbians were often stereotyped as women who wore men’s clothes. And who liked to drive vehicles (big trucks most commonly).
We soon learn she is a vicious sadist who enjoys torturing people to death (Chapter 20). Sadism in old bigoted stereotypes is often linked to Asians and LGBT people, never to straight white people.
But wait – there’s more, as the commercials say (Chapter 20).
The police detective Mayhew and Miss Rachel are talking. They discuss the killer’s knowledge of electrical devices, which she used to fake an alibi.
The sexist Mayhew says that electric machinery is an odd thing for a woman to know about. Their exact words:
“It’s a queer thing for a woman to know, this is.”
“Not so queer for Anne Sticklemann. She and her brother owned an operated an electric repair shop together. I’d think — she was like a man in so many ways.”
Here we have it:
She was “like a man”.
She had a man’s profession, repairing machinery.
She was “queer”: a word long used to signal gay people – see THE MALTESE FALCON (1929).
In the censor ridden world of 1939, it was difficult to come right out and say someone was gay. One had to signal it, through coded references. The finale of THE CAT SAW MURDER does this over and over. It really lays it on with a trowel.
September 8th, 2017 at 5:58 am
Forgot to add: The finale reveals the killer’s name is Anne Sticklemann. This name combines a phallic symbol, “Stick”, with the word “man”. It symbolizes that she is a woman who is “like a man”: ie, one of those Evil Lesbians.