Thu 1 Oct 2020
PI Mystery Review: PAUL KRUGER – Weave a Wicked Web.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[6] Comments
PAUL KRUGER – Weave a Wicked Web. Phil Kramer #2. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1967. Paperback Library 63-180, paperback; 1st printing, December 1969.
There’s a little reviewer’s license going on there in the line up above. Phil Kramer’s not a licensed PI. What he is instead is a practicing attorney, but what he’s hired to do in this, his second appearance, is definitely a PI’s job, and the way he tackles it is exactly how a PI would. A PI in other colors is still a PI, no matter how you may look at it. Or him, as the shoe may fit.
It all begins when a beautiful blonde walks into his office to have a woman called Kitty Bates found. She also has a description of her, but nothing about her background or anything else. She also will not say why she wants her found. There’s not much for Kramer to go on, but when he sees a story in a newspaper about a woman’s otherwise unidentified body having been found, the wheels in the case finally get going.
And what a case it is. It turns out that Kitty Bates – yes, it is she – has been blackmailing someone in his client’s family for a long time, and that possibly even before she was killed, someone else had impersonated her to obtain $50,000 in cash from someone else in the family. And then two, maybe three, other deaths occur, Kramer is knocked out from behind at least once, and all of the alibis of those who may have responsible are leaking like sieves.
This, in other words, is a detective story with a capital D. Do not expect any more character development than there is in your average Perry Mason novel, for there is none. There are twists galore in the telling, culminating in a long scene at the end, over ten pages long, in which all of the suspects have been gathered together while Kramer explains all – naming two killers in succession before finally implicating the real one.
All fine and good, but even if this sound fine and good to you (and I freely admit that some may not), the telling is awfully dry, with lots of repetition as Kramer continually goes over the facts with everyone he speaks to. It’s a good mystery, no doubt about it, but with only a minimum amount of juice in it to speak of, it’s not a great one.
The Phil Kramer series –
Weep for Willow Green. Simon 1966
Weave a Wicked Web. Simon 1967
If the Shroud Fits. Simon 1969
The Bronze Claws. Simon 1972
The Cold Ones. Simon 1972
Besides her five Phil Kramer novels, “Paul Kruger,” a pen name of Roberta Elizabeth Sebenthall, (1917-1979), has five other works of crime fiction included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.
October 1st, 2020 at 8:09 pm
You could still, just, get away with this kind of P.I. tale in the late Sixties, but the genre was tightening and increasingly required more of the writers who would survive into the boom of the eighties.
Where once competence was enough increasingly you had to give readers more to compete for smaller markets.
Once Parker and Spenser were established everybody had to up their game.
The best of the lawyer eyes like Scott Jordan and John Marshall Tanner managed to behave more like eyes than lawyers in most of their cases.
October 1st, 2020 at 10:11 pm
The level of competence is certainly there in this one, but I think Kruger just wasn’t able to add enough spark to the tale to make it shine the way it should. And, no, while the story is a whole lot better than one you’d find in a typical Ace Double of a slightly earlier era, she’s definitely not in Parker’s league, nor Pronzini’s, nor Healy’s, not Tapply’s, and so on, all authors pretty much yet to come.
All in all, a solid “C plus” for this one.
I’m going to have to read a Scott Jordan novel now, or as soon as I can. It’s been a very long time.
October 2nd, 2020 at 11:49 am
I browsed around on Ebay and found a non-Phil Kramer book by Kruger/Sebenthall (The Finish Line) with back jacket blurbs by John Dickson Carr for this book and Weep for Willow Green. Maybe it’s how Carr would have done a lawyer/PI novel.
October 2nd, 2020 at 1:51 pm
There are two blurbs on the front cover of this one, one by Carr, and five on the back cover, again one by Carr.
Those by Carr:
Front cover: “A first- class new talent.”
Back cover: “WEAVE A WICKED WEB does just that. It’s a beauty, with flashes to please every spider.”
October 2nd, 2020 at 1:58 pm
To follow up, Yes, I an see how this book might appeal to Carr. The plot is twisty complicated, that’s for sure. and the detective work is quite intense.
October 2nd, 2020 at 4:29 pm
In a separate email Jim has just reminded me that some time ago now I posted a review of one of Paul Kruger’s other PI novels. Here’s the link:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=39480
I’d forgotten all about it!
Here’s a relevant paragraph:
“The only aspect of the mystery that raises it above standard fare is the ending, which is a doozie. [PI Vince] Latimer builds a solid case against two people before settling on a third, which is the correct one. It isn’t easy writing a detective novel in which this happens. The drawback being that it takes lots and lots of last chapter explanation to untangle all of the threads of the plot. I didn’t mind, but your standard PI novel reader might.”
Exactly the same type of ending as this one!