CHARLES MERRILL SMITH – Reverend Randollph and the Fall from Grace, Inc.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1978. Paperback reprint: Avon, 1982.

   This third mystery adventure of C. P. Randollph, a one-time pro quarterback now turned minister, continues to learn the ins and outs of his new profession, and in this case more specifically, how he finds that a clergyman’s responsibilities entail more than just his presence at Sunday morning services.

   In addition, there are often affairs of a political nature to contend with, both within the church and out. In this case, as an extreme example, being murdered are the close associates of a television evangelist who hopes to join Randollph’s denomination before announcing his bid for the U. S. Senate.

   Without a doubt, organized religion can always use such engagingly down-to-earth men of the cloth as Reverend Randollph. Reporting fairly on the mystery, however, I reluctantly have to admit that the motive for murder is an unlikely one.

[UPDATE] 12-24-08.  The Reverend Randollph books, concerned with everyday church life as they were, remain among my favorite mysteries in which clergymen do double-up duty as sleuths and detectives.

   Charles Merrill Smith wrote five of them before a relatively early death, with a sixth almost finished at the time of his passing. The book was completed by his son Terrance Lore Smith, also a mystery novelist. Phil Grosset, on his webpage for the character, says that Terrance intended to continue the Reverend Randollph stories on his own, but two years later he was killed himself in an automobile accident.

   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all six Reverend Randollph mysteries:

SMITH, CHARLES MERRILL. 1918-1985.
      Reverend Randollph and the Wages of Sin. Putnam, 1974.

      Reverend Randollph and the Avenging Angel. Putnam 1977.
      Reverend Randollph and the Fall from Grace, Inc. Putnam, 1978.
      Reverend Randollph and the Holy Terror. Putnam, 1980.
      Reverend Randollph and the Unholy Bible. Putnam, 1983.

      Reverend Randollph and the Splendid Samaritan (completed by the author’s son, Terrance Lore Smith). Putnam, 1986.

KATHRYN LASKY KNIGHT – Mortal Words.

Pocket, reprint paperback; 1st printing, July 1991. Hardcover edition: Summit Books, 1990.

   It’s a comfort then [after reading and reviewing Ben Sloane’s Hot Zone] to return to the real world, where deaths still occur, but when they do, they’re seriously mourned. The real world, unfortunately, is filled with violence, there’s no denying that, but it’s nice to be able to feel that you’re not the only one who feels that violence is the problem, and very seldom is it the solution.

   On the top of the front cover, even before the title, is the heading: “Calista Jacobs is back!” Unfortunately, this is the first I knew about Trace Elements, which was Callista’s first mystery-adventure, along with her precocious son Charley, who is now 13, so I never knew she was away.

   Luckily (in a matter of speaking) enough references to the earlier book are made that I may not even have to go out looking for it. In terms of updating her life, in Mortal Words Calista is now a widow. She is also a world-famous illustrator of children’s books, and she and Charley live in that hotbed of liberalism, Cambridge, Mass.

   This is definitely not a book for readers of a more conservative persuasion. The book opens with Calista and her friends being harassed by a fervent right-wing fundamentalist at a librarian’s literary conference, and the plot grows to include born-again evangelists, evolutionary racists, and Nazi-inspired sperm banks. Moral cripples all, according to Ms. Knight, but nonetheless they embody a powerful anti-science movement, and quite the nasty combination indeed.

   Naturally Calista is opposed to all this with every fiber of her being, and equally naturally it makes her an obvious target. Murder also occurs, but with Charley’s computer-hacking abilities and general intellectual curiosity, along with Calista’s growing friendship with Archie Baldwin, noted archaeologist, the villains stand very little chance.

   As you may have gathered, here is a mystery that is bursting the seams of plain old (and old-fashioned) detective fiction, and in my opinion, it certainly wouldn’t hurt anybody to read it. As a detective story, though, I think it’s seriously flawed by the total lack of attention the Boston police force pay to the murder and to the invaders of Calista’s home.

   They are so severely excluded from the story, as a matter of fact, that you begin to wonder if they could possibly be in on the plot. I hope I’m not saying too much without a [WARNING: Plot Alert] that they are not, but it certainly makes the rest of the story a little harder to swallow.

   This same lack of concern on the part of Calista and Archie as to their safety, and that of Charley, is just as hard to accept. If murder and the invasion of one’s home isn’t warning enough that their opponents are serious, what is?

[UPDATE] 12-23-08.   The author wrote only four books in the series. As Kathryn Lasky, she’s been much prolific as a writer of children’s books, both fiction and non-fiction, for which she’s been given a list of awards as long as your arm. Expanded from her entry the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here are her four mysteries, all with Calista Jacobs:

KNIGHT, KATHRYN LASKY. 1944- .
      Trace Elements. Norton, hc, 1986. Pocket, pb, 1987.

      Mortal Words. Summit, 1990. Pocket, pb, 1991.
      Mumbo Jumbo. Summit 1991. Pocket, pb, 1992.
      Dark Swan. St. Martin’s, 1994. Worldwide, pb, 1996.

GLORIA WHITE – Murder on the Run.

Dell, paperback original. First printing, July 1991.

   According to page one, Ronnie Ventana is the half-Mexican daughter of a pair of jewel thieves. Somehow she is now a PI. According the short bio at the end of the book, this is Gloria White’s first novel.

   Of these two statements, the first one is more than a little unusual, but it’s actually the second one that’s harder to believe. This is a very good book, and if I had any say in the matter (which I don’t, since I’m not involved in voting for any book for any award) I think it could easily be nominated for Best First Novel in anybody’s league.

   It begins like this. Ronnie is out running near Golden Gate Bridge one morning, when she spots two men struggling. One pushes the other into the water, and then she is pursued by the one who did the pushing. Luckily she gets away.

   Two problems follow right away: (1) the body is not discovered immediately, and (2) she recognizes the person who did the dumping as Pete August, a PI who once worked for the D.A.’s office, and who was also once on the police department — and in brief, a fair-headed, high profile boy with all his former connections still intact.

   Snubbed by the police, Ronnie keeps on the case. More deaths follow, and she manages to get a homicide detective named Philly Post interested. Ronnie is a lady who doesn’t give up, and the story has both ginger and snap.

   There is even an unexpected twist ahead. The only problem is the ending. It’s too predictable. A little too obvious. I saw it caning. One good twist deserves another, as the saying goes, and I didn’t get it.

   Don’t get me wrong, though. This book is as good as any of the other female PI novels I’ve read in recent months, and some of them were as good as some of the males of the species. (A number of them were even better.)

[UPDATE] 12-20-08. This is the first review I’ve reprinted since I announced the new focus for this blog posted last weekend but revised earlier today. I was doing movie reviews back in 1991 as well as now, and the ones in this old issue of M*F will soon be showing up here also.

   As for Gloria White, her PI character Ronnie Ventana didn’t have as long a career as I was hoping when I wrote this review. In spite of a slew of award nominations, which I’m pleased to have anticipated, Dell dropped her books after only four outings. Luckily, and this doesn’t always happen, two more books in the series have come out in recent years, and in hardcover to boot.

   Expanded from her entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all of Gloria White’s mystery fiction:

WHITE, GLORIA.    Series character: PI Ronnie Ventana in all.
      * Murder on the Run. Dell, pbo, 1991. [Anthony Award finalist]
      * Money to Burn. Dell, pbo, 1993.
      * Charged with Guilt. Dell, pbo, 1995. [Edgar Award Finalist, Shamus Award Nominee, Anthony Award Finalist]

      * Sunset and Santiago. Dell, pbo. 1997. [Edgar Award Finalist, Shamus Award Finalist]
      * Death Notes. Severn House, hc, April 2005.
      * Cry Baby. Severn House, hc, June 2006; trade paperback, June 2007.

BRUCE ZIMMERMAN – Thicker Than Water.

Detective Book Club; reprint hardcover [3-in-1 edition]. First edition: HarperCollins, 1991. Paperback reprint: Harper, 1993.

   In the five year period from 1989 to 1994, Bruce Zimmerman wrote four mystery thrillers featuring phobia therapist Quinn Parker, but since then he seems to have disappeared. Or at least I’ve found nothing more about him than what’s in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction III, even using a quick search on the Internet. The four books and nothing more.    [See also the UPDATE below.]

   From the book at hand, the second in the series, Zimmerman seems to have been aiming at the moderately-boiled Travis McGee market. Treating phobia patients as a profession seems to be a good way of getting the San Francisco based Parker into all kinds of scrapes, but in this book, nothing is made of it.

   Parker gets involved this time when he gives a good buddy a hand after he inherits a half-million dollar estate in Jamaica and finds there are exceedingly dangerous strings attached.

   Zimmerman is very good at thumbnail dead-on descriptions of the people found in his books, and more than once I was brought suddenly to attention by a plot twist that was (to say the least) unexpected. But as a detective, Quinn Parker is — well, if inept is not quite the right word, then to say the least, he’s not very good at it. One additional death, if not two, can be attributed directly to Parker’s entirely unsavvy approach to the business at hand.

   Worse, he seems all but blithely unaware of it. He swallows hard, and it’s on to the next chapter. Nor is the ending particularly neat and tidy, with one explanation in particular producing (in my mind) many more questions than answer.

   From mind-boggling turns of plot to mind-blowing maladroitness, that’s the mix. Worth spending an evening’s reading time on, but not likely to be remembered strongly by more than a few of those who do.

[UPDATE] 12-18-08. First of all, notice that I referred to Crime Fiction III in this review. The latest edition of Al Hubin’s book (but available only on CD) is the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   Secondly, either the Internet contains more than it did six years ago, or I’m getting better at Google. Was Google around six years ago? Maybe not. Either way, I found out why there were four Quinn Parker mysteries (as stated in the review) and only four.

   Bruce Zimmerman, as it turns out, discovered Hollywood, or Hollywood discovered him. To his lasting great fortune, Zimmerman started writing for TV in 1998, and in 2000 he turned producer. Series to his credit in the latter capacity (thanks to IMDB) include The District, Judging Amy, Desperate Housewives, CSI: NY, and K-Ville. (I really liked that last series, a cop show taking place in New Orleans, but I think I was the only one. After last year’s writers’ strike, it never returned.)

   And thanks to the previously mentioned Crime Fiction IV, slightly expanded, here’s a list of the mystery novels that Bruce Zimmerman produced:

ZIMMERMAN, BRUCE. 1952- . Series character: Quinn Parker, in all four.
      Blood Under the Bridge. Harper, hc, 1989; St.Martin’s, pb, 1990.   [Nominated for an Edgar in the Best First Novel category.]

      Thicker Than Water. Harper, hc, 1991; ppbk, 1993.
      Full-Bodied Red. Harper, hc, 1993; ppbk, 1994.
      Crimson Green. Harper, hc, 1994; ppbk, 1995.

JAYNE CASTLE – The Chilling Deception.

Dell, paperback original. First printing, August 1986.

   Speaking of numbers of books sold, as I was in my preceding review of Richard S. Prather’s Over My Dear Body, Jayne Castle is no slouch in racking up sales, which were up to seven million in print at the time The Chilling Deception came out. (Ms. Castle is also known as Stephanie James and Jayne Ann Krentz, which also happens to be her real name.)

   That many of her books are romances without a hint of mystery to them makes no difference at all, especially to the IRS and other more mortal bean-counters.   [Jayne Krentz is also Amanda Quick, under which name many of her more mystery-oriented books have appeared, but she didn’t use that name until several years after this review first appeared.]

   Prompted, I assume, by the success of such TV series as Remington Steele and Moonlighting, in which the pseudo-romance between the leading characters is featured as prominently as the detective story itself, book publishers (never ones not to sense a dollar when a dollar is there) have decided to get in on the action. Hence, the second of the adventures of Guinevere Jones, exclusive secretarial assistant, and Zachariah Justis, sophisticated security specialist.

   They have a romance going — or more properly, perhaps, an affair — and in between trying to help their combined client in this book out from whatever trouble he is in — he won’t tell them — Guinevere is trying to pin Zach down as to what exactly their relationship is, and Zach, he’s simply trying to pin Guinevere down. In bed, that is.

   There is more explicit sex in this book than in Richard Prather’s, say, and nothing else could be more indicative as to how times have changed. Swooning is hardly enough for today’s readers — and I imagine I’m talking about the female half of the population, for I don’t believe many males will read this book.

   And if they do, they are likely to find the other scenes, those in which Guinevere and Zach talk (or, when they’re alone, think) about their relationship, something less than totally compelling. (I hope I’m not maligning men too much.)

   I have little idea how the aforementioned female half of the population will go for this book and this series, except to say that a track record of seven million books is quite a record to build on.

[UPDATE] 12-12-08. There were in all four books in the series. They all came out in 1986. Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a complete list:

JONES, GUINEVERE
      o The Desperate Game (n.) Dell, pbo, June 1986.

      o The Chilling Deception (n.) Dell, pbo, Aug 1986.
      o The Sinister Touch (n.) Dell, pbo, Oct 1986.
      o The Fatal Fortune (n.) Dell, pbo, Dec 1986.

   She has her own page on the Thrilling Detective website, devoted to private eyes of all kinds, but other than that, I don’t know how successful the series was.

   Except for this. If you were to search for any of these four books on Amazon, which is where you will find the most accurate prices books are really going for, you will find only one for which the asking price is less than $22.50, and I’m willing to wager that that one book won’t last long at that price.

   Apparently none have been reprinted. If that’s so, one wonders why, as the market for Jayne Ann Krentz’s fiction seems to know no bounds. If her total was seven million books in print in 1986, one can only imagine what it is now.

BENJAMIN WOLFF – Hyde and Seek.

Avon, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1984.

   A blurb from Tony Hillerman is on the back cover, and he makes the book sound promising, if not more so: “A great story, a skillful storyteller … action-suspense fans are going to love this one.”

   I hate to disagreed with Mr. Hillerman, but I do. I thought the story was murkily plotted, that Wolff is an unpolished story-teller, and that while I personally didn’t go wild over it, maybe the book did sell well in army post bookstores. Not that it’s in Donald Pendleton’s league, but when it comes down to it, whose are?

   From the publicity blurb on the front cover, I was also led to believe that this was a private eye yarn. As it turns out, though, the only real connection the protagonist of the story, John Byron Hyde, has with that profession is through a part-time job he has doing an insurance investigator’s books.

   He is also a part-time karate instructor, however, and a disillusioned post-traumatized Vietnam vet, and (after some thought) nobody I’d really rather care to know. (There goes the rooting interest.) When he’s asked by a girl (a knockout, of course) to help her find her brother, who’s mysteriously disappeared, he ends up in a sour-tasting melange of drug smuggling, South American politics, and the semi-benevolent order of The Good Helpers of our Lady The Mother of God.

   After something of a conclusion has taken place (at least everybody’s motivations are laid out in the open), the story is clearly continued into the next volume of Mr. Hyde’s adventures. I have a copy — it’s here somewhere– but if/when I find it, the question is, will I read it? You have two guesses, the same as I, and the second doesn’t count.

[UPDATE] 12-11-08.   An uneasiness I have whenever I pull a review out of my archives that’s as negative as this one is that it turns out to have been written by someone I know, but writing under a pen name at the time. Not that I fear writing negative reviews (not all books can be as wonderful as the publicity guys make them sound), but generally speaking, I tend not to write reviews of books by authors I know.

   It turns out that Wolff was a pen name, and that there were only two of John Hyde’s adventures. My review had nothing to do with the latter. No more than 40 people may have seen this review when it first appeared; more than likely it was only a tenth of that.

   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV by Allen J. Hubin:

WOLFF, BENJAMIN. Pseudonym of Louis Chunovic; see also Charles Heath.
      Hyde and Seek (Avon, 1984, pb) [John Byron Hyde; Los Angeles, CA]
      Hyde in Deep Cover (Avon, 1985, pb) [John Byron Hyde; Bolivia]
      Nasty Boys (Berkley, 1991, pb) [Las Vegas, NV]

HEATH, CHARLES. Generally a pseudonym of Ron Renauld, but also note the book below:
      Operation Desert Sun: The Untold Story [by Louis Chunovic] (Dell, 1984, pb) [A-Team; Middle East]. Novelization of the “A-Team” TV series.

TALMAGE POWELL – Man-Killer.

Ace Double D-469; paperback original. First printing, 1960.

   Speaking of “workmanlike prose,” as I was a little while ago — in the review of the other half of this Ace Double, as a matter of fact — I know Talmage Powell wrote a good deal for the pulps, so I’m not surprised to find anything he wrote totally readable — even, to coin a phrase, “hillbilly mystery fiction,” of which this might be a prime example (complete with moonshiners, deputy sheriffs and other dumb hicks).

   [The other half was Bob McKnight’s Running Scared, and you can find my comments here.]

   If a lack of tightly knit plotting may have been McKnight’s Achilles heel in the other half of the double volume, then a tendency toward melodramatic dialogue is Powell’s in his portion. Or maybe I’m not the one to judge. Perhaps old aristocratic ladies now on hard times actually speak the way they do in this book while contemplating their future — and the future of wayward sons who (in this book) insist on helping a poor hill girl accused of killing her husband days before her divorce becomes final.

   Or maybe the subject matter just naturally leads toward melodrama. More solidly plotted than McKnight’s book, Man-Killer nonetheless lacks the compulsive (not to say screwy) readability of Running Scared, which, on the whole, if you were to ask, I’ve decided is the better of the two.

[UPDATE] Later the same day.   I didn’t do it ahead of time, and maybe I should have, but in the first comment to this post, August West happened to mention Talmage Powell’s private eye character Ed Rivers. Having a few minutes on my hands, I followed up with a list of all five detective novels that he was in. Check it out.

BOB McKNIGHT – Running Scared.

Ace Double D-469; paperback original; 1st printing, 1960.

   I meant to say something about George Harmon Coxe’s “workmanlike” prose in my recent review of Murder for Two, but it could be said just about as well right here. [The phrase is a common one; Google just a moment ago produced about 3000 hits.] What I mean by the term is this: a style of writing that you just don’t notice.

   Nothing so fancy as to call attention to itself, although as a standard that’s hardly enough. It can’t be anything other than a subjective assessment, one that varies from person to person.

   Nonetheless, assuming that there is such a concept, I think that “workmanlike prose” was more common with writers whose background was working for the pulp magazines. Writers whose job it was to tell a story, to get on with it, before their readers got bored and went on to something else.

   Coxe was such a writer. Frank Gruber was another. The most famous was probably Erle Stanley Gardner. None would get much of notice for their writing from a professor of literature, but because they were good writers, they captured the reader’s attention from page one onward.

   Although I don’t believe he ever wrote for the pulps. He came along a little too late for that. He was a paperback writer. He never had a book come out in hardcover, so in the overall scheme of things he’s on a far lower scale than either a Gardner or a Coxe, who both made it big. But a storyteller? Yes.

   The plot of Running Scared is that of your basic, everyday nitwit hero in a not quite everyday basic situation. He’s the kind of guy who has reasons for not calling the cops on page two — for if he had, there would be no story. He watches a murder take place, committed by someone driving his ex-wife’s car, and then he gets a call warning him that she has reported the car stolen. By him.

   He goes to her apartment (after being beaten up by two hoods on the way), befriends another girl there, hides her in a bathroom hamper when the cops come calling, and then finds her shot to death inside the hamper when the cops leave.

   I am not making this up. Actually, it reads very well. McKnight had the knack of making you believe nonsense like this all the while you realize that it is nonsense. Workmanlike prose, remember? One could easily picture an Alan Ladd or a Dick Powell in the leading role.

   But in the end, this is about all there is to say about the book. The pace is terrific, and I guarantee you that once stated, you will keep reading. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you that there is any overall depth to either the characters or the story. It’s too lightweight to be considered memorable, and the non-meticulous details of the plot are exactly that.

   What Running Scared is, though, is fun to read.

[UPDATE] 12-09-08.   My comments on the other half of this Ace Double will be posted here shortly. For the record, it is Man-Killer, by Talmage Powell, an author who really did start out writing for the pulp magazines before shifting into a career, mystery-wise, of mostly paperback originals.

   As for Bob McKnight, here below is a complete list of his novel-length mystery fiction, as compiled in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Surprisingly enough to me, when I wrote this review I obviously didn’t recognize PI Nathan Hawk as being in this book and as being a series character. I thought so little of him, apparently, that I didn’t even mention his name. (I don’t think he was the main protagonist, but perhaps he was.)

   And as long as I’ve brought him up, Nathan Hawk is included in Kevin Burton Smith’s website devoted to Private Eye fiction. He says, in part: “Tough guy eye NATHAN HAWK, transplanted northerner in Sun City, Florida, shot and slugged his way through ten novels published by ACE in the late fifties and early sixties. Detective Lieutenant Toby Duane lends a hand when he can, and dishes out plenty of friendly ‘damn yankee’ jibes along the way.”

   Running Scared is the only one of McKnight’s books I’ve ever read. Even though my judgment was qualified, I’m a sucker for books with wacky openings like this, even if the endings don’t pan out so well in comparison. Given an opportunity, I absolutely would read another.

McKNIGHT, BOB. 1906-1981. Mining engineer, pilot and horse-racing handicapper before semi-retiring to Florida.
      Downwind (n.) Ace Double D-217, 1957 [Santa Fe, NM]
      Murder Mutuel (n.) Ace Double D-279, 1958 [Nathan Hawk; Florida]

      The Bikini Bombshell (n.) Ace Double D-387, 1959 [Nathan Hawk; Florida]

      Swamp Sanctuary (n.) Ace Double D-411, 1959 [Florida]
      Kiss the Babe Goodbye (n.) Ace Double D-447, 1960 [Nathan Hawk; Florida]
      Running Scared (n.) Ace Double D-469, 1960 [DELETE Nathan Hawk; ADD setting: Florida (St. Petersburg)]
      Secret Sinners (n.) Merit 35, 1960 [Nathan Hawk; Florida]
      A Slice of Death (n.) Ace Double D-419, 1960 [Florida]
      Drop Dead, Please (n.) Ace Double D-511, 1961 [Florida]

      The Flying Eye (n.) Ace Double F-102, 1961 [Florida]
      A Stone Around Her Neck (n.) Ace Double F-143, 1962 [Nathan Hawk; Florida]
      Homicide Handicap (n.) Ace Double F-229, 1963 [Nathan Hawk; Florida]

GRAHAM THOMAS – Malice Downstream.

Fawcett Books; paperback original; 1st printing, December 2002.

   Graham Thomas is a Canadian writer (British Columbia) who seems to have the British down pat, both the countryside and the countrymen. This is the fifth case for Detective-Chief Superintendent Erskine Powell, all paperback originals, and in the age of bloated mysteries running up to 400 pages or more, they’re lean and mean at a mere 200 plus.

   In Malice Downstream Powell is found recuperating from a previous injury at a small village called Houghton Bridge, known almost only for its superb chalk stream fishing, and home of the renown Mayfly Club. Taking his mind off his almost healed leg, and to a lesser extent his failing marriage, Powell also finds murder, with roots in the past. Totally out-of-bounds in taking a hand in investigating a case he shouldn’t be, he’s obviously the epitome of a busman on holiday.

   The detective work is solid if not flashy, with a villain rather obvious from first meeting, but if fly-fishing is an art you’re interested in, this is the book for you. And even if you’re not, if you can enjoy reading about the enthusiasm that someone else has for their near-obsessive hobbies, then this is also the book for you.

   Overall a male-oriented book, but still very cozy in nature. Snug and insightful, in a minor key sort of way.

[UPDATE] 12-09-08. Until I looked him up in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, I did not know that Graham Thomas was a pen name, but it is so. I’m guessing, of course, but perhaps Kosakoski did not sound “British” enough to someone whose opinion mattered.

   Using his entry in CFIV as a basis, here below is a complete list of the Graham Thomas mysteries. Chief Supt. Erskine Powell is in all of them.

   Note: In the original version of this review, I stated that Malice Downstream was the sixth in the series. It does not appear to be so, nor was there ever a sixth.

THOMAS, GRAHAM. Pseudonym of Gordon Kosakoski, 1950- .
      Malice in the Highlands. Ivy, pbo, Jan 1998.

      Malice in Cornwall. Ivy, pbo, June 1998.
      Malice on the Moors. Ivy, pbo, Aug 1999.
      Malice in London. Ivy, pbo, April 2000.
      Malice Downstream. Fawcett, pbo, Dec 2002.

CELESTINE SIBLEY – Ah, Sweet Mystery

Detective Book Club; hardcover reprint [3-in-1 edition]. First Edition: HarperCollins, 1991; paperback reprint, 1992.

   It would take some investigating to be sure, but there may be record of sorts that was set with the publication of this book, Sibley’s second mystery novel. Atlanta newspaper reporter-columnist Kate Mulcay appeared in the first one, The Malignant Heart, which was published in 1958, and she’s in this one as well, only a mere 33 years later. (There may have been wider gaps between series appearances by a given character, but between the author’s first and second mystery, with the same character?)

   Sibley, also a newspaper columnist, also from Atlanta, was 74 when she wrote this one, and she went on to write four more Mulcay books, the final one in 1997, two years before she died.

   Kate, now widowed in Ah, Sweet Mystery, is of an indeterminate age, but she’s still actively writing her columns and going along on a police raids. Hints of her life with her husband Benjy, a member of the Atlanta police force, suggest that he appeared in the first book, but Kate now lives on her own.

   Dead is Garney Wilcox, a cutthroat real estate developer intent on transformed quiet corners of Atlanta and environs into apartment complexes. Confessing to the crime is his stepmother, Miss Willie, whom Garney had recently persuaded to abandon her long-time home for the comforts of a rundown nursing manor.

   There are only a few mystery novels, I am sure, which incorporate the songs and mystique of Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald as part of the plot, but this is one of them. Also an underlying theme is the sense that pieces of traditional southern living and hospitality are disappearing, and that life in general in the South is changing. “Little enough country left,” Kate says on page 211. “I come this way if I have time.”

   The mystery itself is not nearly as strong as the nice homey feeling that Sibley creates, giving Kate guidance as she seeks out the roots of true southern culture. Puzzling to me was the dead man, who seems to have been electrocuted as part of his travails, rubbing up against a raw wire in a house where the electricity has been cut off. And while the culprits seem fairly obvious, the actions of the dead man’s wife are unfathomable, or at least unexplained.

   On the basis of a sample of size one, Sibley’s books, while sound as social statements and weak as detective novels, should still be more widely known than I think they are. (They’ve all come out as paperbacks, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across a used one.)

[UPDATE] 12-08-08. For the record, here’s a list of all of Celestine Sibley’s mystery fiction, thanks to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Kate Mulcay appears in all five:

SIBLEY, CELESTINE (1917-1999)
      * The Malignant Heart. Doubleday 1958.

      * Ah, Sweet Mystery. Harper 1991.
      * Straight As an Arrow. Harper 1992.
      * Dire Happenings at Scratch Ankle. Harper 1993.
      * A Plague of Kinfolks. Harper 1995.
      * Spider in the Sink. Harper 1997.