SARAH STEWART TAYLOR – Judgment of the Grave. St. Martin’s Press: hardcover, June 2005; paperback, August 2006.

   Sweeney St. George, temporarily relieved of her academic teaching duties, pursues her interest in funerary art (mainly gravestones) by relocating to Concord to do primary research on the bizarre headstones carved by a Revolutionary era stonecutter. She finds herself following the trail already opened up by another scholar who’s disappeared and is presumed to be dead.

   I prefer Sweeney in her academic setting, where she seems more at home, but the novel, if somewhat over ingenious in its plotting, is still a pleasing mix of scholarship and murder, both of them natural lures for the always inquisitive protagonist.

ANN WALDRON – Unholy Death in Princeton. Berkley, paperback original, March 2005.

   A novel somewhat in the same vein as the one above. It features a protagonist (McLeod Dulaney) who’s a prizewinning journalist doing research for a biography on an abolitionist newspaperman at Princeton Seminary.

   In comparison with Taylor’s book, however, Waldron’s novel is cluttered with forgettable characters and really awful dialogue, further compromised by a meandering plot and an improbable climax.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:

   The Sweeney St. George mysteries:

   The McLeod Dulaney mysteries:

DON VON ELSNER – Just Not Making Mayhem Like They Used To.

Signet S2040; paperback original, December 1961.

   Have you ever read fifty pages into a book late into the evening, look up at the clock, see that it says that it’s one o’clock in the morning, and realize that the last 30 pages haven’t made much sense at all?

   I hate to say it of any book, but that’s what happened to me with this one. It’s not that I was tired, which is what I assumed the next morning, and maybe that’s what you’re thinking too, but no, that wasn’t it. I tried again, on and off, the whole week that followed. I struggled, I skimmed, and I skipped, and if you want to forgo reading the rest of this review for any of the reasons listed, you’d be right. I wouldn’t blame you in the least.

   This is the second recorded adventure of Colonel David Danning, lawyer, bridge player, and judo expert, among other accomplishments. If nothing else, the titles of his cases are designed to catch your attention. Expanded from the author’s entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

      Those Who Prey Together Slay Together. Signet D1943, June 1961.

      Just Not Making Mayhem Like They Used To. Signet S2020, Dec 1961.
      Don’t Just Stand There, Do Someone. Signet S2134, 1962
      You Can’t Do Business with Murder. Signet S2214, Dec 1962
      Who Says a Corpse Has to Be Dull. Signet G2407, 1963
      Pour a Swindle Through a Loophole. Belmont 92-604, Sept 1964
      Countdown for a Spy. Signet D2829, Jan 1966.

      A Bullet for Your Dreams. Lancer 73-709, 1968.

   Yes, I agree; the originality does tend to tail off toward the end. For the record, Von Elsner’s other mysteries feature Jake Winkman, a professional bridge player who helps out the CIA from time to time:

      How to Succeed at Murder Without Really Trying. Signet 1963. Reprinted as: The Jake of Diamonds. Award, 1967 (not a misprint)
      The Ace of Spies. Award 1966

      The Jack of Hearts. Award 1968

   According to Contemporary Authors, Don Von Elser (1909-1997) was a Life Master of the American Contract Bridge League, which explains why his heroes happen to be expert players too.

   Danning is hired by an underwriters association in Mayhem to find out why so many small businessmen have been committing suicide recently at such an unnatural rate. Danning immediately suspects a gang of blackmailers at work, and he accepts the job. Five months later, he’s still working, with no results to speak of. On page 22: “A vague pattern began to take shape in Danning’s mind.”

   But then, at long last, the logjam breaks. Danning comes across the story of Homer Pettingill, the man whose misadventures were related to the reader in Chapters One and Two, and hold on to reins, honey, we’re off to the races, and the book doesn’t stop until page 142 and the case is closed.

   Assisting Danning are his adoring secretary Nell Sheridan, who has to prod him into taking cases to boost his disposition; Dr. Greta Nevin of UCLA, who possesses the longest and loveliest legs of any psychology professor in the world; his son Bob, whom he calls Duke, and vice versa, and who looks exactly like him; and a whole agency of private detectives at his continuous beck and call.

   As I type this, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I may have simply been in the wrong mood to read this book, but here’s what is it that goes wrong, as far as I’ve been able to decide, humorous approach prevailing or not.

   Danning’s case is built upon nothing but coincidence and guesswork. Two guys in a hotel chosen at random might be the pair of con men that they’re looking for – of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world – and yes, they are the ones they’re looking for, a silly escapade with the married folks in the room next door notwithstanding.

   I’ve have thought they’d have investigated the mechanics of the crime and the actual way it was pulled off, but no, no questions are asked along those lines, save very obliquely. But after all of the fancy scheming to get the goods on the bad guys – I skimmed a lot here – it turns out in the recap and the explanations at the end, it all depends on guess what? The mechanics of the crime and the actual way it was pulled off.

   Which you’ve got to read to believe. I don’t, not even for a minute. There’s a good chance that you’ll disagree with me on any or all of this, but I have a hunch that you won’t.

CHARLES L. LEONARD – Sinister Shelter.

Unicorn Book Club; reprint edition. Originally published by Doubleday Crime Club, 1949. Digest paperback reprint: Bestseller Mystery B141. Pulp magazine reprint: Two Complete Detective Books, May 1950 (probably abridged).

   One way you can read mystery and detective novels from the late 1940s and early 50s, if you can’t come across them in any other way, is to find them in hardcover book club editions, either from the three-in-one Detective Book Club, or the four-in-one volumes that came from the Unicorn Mystery Book Club.

   Of the two, the Unicorn Books were classier in appearance, and they look very handsome on the bookshelf. They didn’t last nearly as long as their competitors, however, including of course the Dollar Mystery Guild, which eventually came along. (And still is going strong today, although you can certainly forget the dollar part of their name.)

   In any case, without going further into their history (for now), I just bought about 20 of the Unicorn books on eBay, and over the next few weeks I’m planning on using them for reading material. Whether I skip around or read whole volumes at a time, I haven’t decided, but if it makes any difference, I think I’ll try reading this particular grouping all the way through. Stay tuned.

   In real life Charles L. Leonard, author of eleven private eye Paul Kilgerrin novels, of which this one, was M. V. Heberden, who also wrote two other series of PI novels under that name, one featuring Desmond Shannon (17 books), the other being Rick Vanner, who appeared in three.

   I’m not sure when the secret came out, but I imagine some eyebrows were raised when the initials M. V. were revealed to stand for Mary Violet. It’s been a while since I read any of them, but what little bibliographic information is about her books on the Internet suggests that they were tough, rugged and a little hard-boiled, reminiscent not at all of “shrinking violets.”

   While nominally a private eye, in this particular book Kilgerrin given an assignment by the government to help stop a flood of illegal immigrants from coming into the US after World War II. And from the list of titles he appeared in, he seems have been an undercover spy much more often than he worked out of an office where good-looking women who came in were apt to be his clients.

   Here’s a list of the Kilgerrin books. I think you’ll come to the same conclusion as I did. (All of the books were first published in hardcover by Doubleday Crime Club.)

Deadline for Destruction (1942)
The Stolen Squadron (1942)

The Fanatic of Fez (1943)
Secret of the Spa (1944)
Expert in Murder (1945)
Pursuit in Peru (1946)
Search for a Scientist (1947)
The Fourth Funeral (1948)
Sinister Shelter (1949)
Secrets for Sale (1950)
Treachery in Trieste (1951)

   Not that there aren’t good-looking women involved, at least in Sinister Shelter. While he is working undercover to get a line on the people smugglers, Kilgerrin befriends the members of a refugee family who are trying to make their way into the United States via Argentina.

   Among them is a young widow and her young boy who are living with her husband’s parent, said husband having disappeared after being arrested by the Nazis some time before. Kilgerrin is kind and gentle with the family, especially with Irma, and if he is hard-boiled about some other things, with her he does not seem to be.

   The essence and general ambiance reminded me more of Hammett than it did Chandler, and for a long time, it was difficult to understand why. (I’ll return to this later.) Kilgerrin works with a firm goal in mind, but he has the capability of being able to improvise quickly, such as when the elderly father meets someone the family had known well back in Austria.

   Marie Louise, now Louise Ritter, is the other woman in the story, and while her strong, enigmatic presence shifts the story quickly into second gear, it will occur to more than one reader, I am sure, that while coincidences like this often happen in the real world, fiction is never quite that strange.

   In a way, there is a morality play going on. How does one comport oneself in the face of tyranny, the elderly father wonders on page 121, one man, acting alone, against evil? Kilgerrin himself tries to be understanding with Irma, but often finds himself frustrated when she cannot forget the past, when it stays with her and she cannot free herself from it.

   The puzzle presented by the novel’s other lady of mystery gradually absorbs more and more of his attention. Kilgerrin has more in common with Louise Ritter, and he soon realizes it, making the question of how deeply she is involved with the smuggling gang all the more a matter of importance. (This could have been handled, unfortunately, somewhat more eptly.)

   They are two entirely different women, and to Kilgerrin each is a mystery in different ways. The scene in which he last sees Irma is when (for me) the Hammett-Chandler comparison suddenly snaps into focus.

   There is very little action, surprisingly enough, until the end. Character studies need some patience on the part of their readers, and that’s what, in large part, this story is comprised of. On the other hand, just to be sure that you know there is one, I’m going to quote the last few lines of the book, at which point in time the primary antagonist has been identified and is being discussed.

   I’ve tried to be very careful in setting this up properly. If I’ve done it correctly, this will demonstrate, more than anything else, that there’s more involved here than character studies.

[UPDATE] 07-04-08. Since I don’t imagine you can make them out in the small image shown, the other three books in the same Unicorn volume as this one are: Drop Dead, by George Bagby; Tough Cop, by John Roeburt; and The Girl with the Hole in Her Head, by Hampton Stone.

   In spite of the promise I made in the course of this review, I never did get around to reading any of these. On the other hand, the book is still here on the table next to the computer and keyboard where I’m typing away. That must mean something, mustn’t it?

   The other reason, of course, for retrieving this review from the archives, is the preceding post, the “mystery author” turning out to be Mary Heberden, aka M. V. Heberden, aka Charles L. Leonard. More on her shortly, I hope — what little is known about her so far.

JOANNE FLUKE – Strawberry Shortcake Murder.

Kensington; paperback reprint, February 2002. Hardcover first edition: Kensington, March 2001.

   By sheer happenstance — a fluke of luck, you might say [*] — I discovered that Joanne Fluke has had quite a varied writing career. She seems to have started out writing horror novels, beginning in the early 1980s: books with titles like The Stepchild, Video Kill, and so on. Then as Jo Gibson she began writing young adult novels in much the same vein: Slay Bells, My Bloody Valentine and more.

   As “Kathryn Kirkwood” in the late 1990s she began to branch out in an altogether different direction: regency romances. And two years ago she seems to found her forte with the first in her Hannah Swenson mystery series, The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.

   This is the second, with the third already out in hardcover, and if these books don’t at least make you hungry — recipes included — nothing will. Hannah runs a cookie shop in snowbound Lake Eden, Minnesota. Fluke makes it sound like a small town, and the way things are going, in a few more books, it will be even smaller. (Trend analysis at work.)

   When the local basketball coach is found murdered after his last-minute substitution as a judge for a TV cooking contest, Hannah and her non-lookalike sister go snooping after the killer, even though Hannah’s boy friend (a cop) and Andrea’s husband (also a cop) do their best to discourage them.

   A cozy sort of mystery novel, as comfortable as scarves and old shawls. Most of the appeal lies in the people, Hannah’s friends, relatives and neighbors, which constitutes 90% of the population of Lake Eden. The detective work is minor — there is an interval of time during which almost every reader will simply be screaming (non-verbally) for the obvious to dawn on Hannah and her sister.

   Even so, it’s a fun read, to coin a phrase, and I think Fluke has something good going for her.

[*]   I confess. Not luck at all. On page 181 of the paperback edition, the Lake Eden Regency Romance Club re-enacts a scene from one of Kathryn Kirkwood’s (unpublished?) regency romance novels. You can’t read this without at least cracking a smile.

[UPDATE] 07-02-08. I’m not very good at predicting track records of authors, but I was right this time. Just over six years later, there are now ten books and one novella in the series, and I don’t think Hannah Swenson will run out of recipes anything soon:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (2000)

Strawberry Shortcake Murder (2001)

Blueberry Muffin Murder (2002)

Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (2003)

Fudge Cupcake Murder (2004)

Sugar Cookie Murder (2004)

Peach Cobbler Murder (2005)

Cherry Cheesecake Murder (2006)

Key Lime Pie Murder (2007)

Candy Cane Murder (2007) (a novella included in Candy Cane Murder;
   other authors: Laura Levine & Leslie Meier)

Carrot Cake Murder (2008)

ANNA GILBERT – A Morning in Eden.

St. Martin’s; hardcover; First US Edition, Dec 2001. UK edition: Robert Hale, 2001. No paperback editions.

   A couple of quick reactions first. (a) No diehard private eye fan will ever read this slow-moving tale of adolescent romance in a remote village in England, just after the close of World War I. (b) Time and place are both important aspects of the story, and yet very little of the outside world intrudes — soldiers are coming home from the war, trying to fit into society again — but it’s all very incidental, hardly a major theme.

   After the death of one aunt, young Lorna Kent goes to live with another. In isolated Canterlow, she realizes that her infatuation with the local headmaster must be kept secret.

   She also discovers she is surrounded by swirls of other mysteries around her. Even more sinister secrets abound — most centering around the death (suicide or murder?) of another young girl not too long before.

   Ominous writing prevails, filled with constant portent, imbued with the sadness of nostalgia and the regrets of life that could have been. Decisions made that could not be undone.

   More than the mystery to be solved, the reader begins rather to wonder when Lorna will make her own right decision — glaringly obvious, if she were only to see.

[UPDATE] 06-21-08.    Anna Gilbert was the pen name of Marguerite Lazarus (1916-  ), making her 85 years old when this book appeared. (I have used “was” in the past tense only because I am fairly sure she is no longer writing; I have found no information to say that she has passed away.)

   [Unfortunately I was wrong when I wrote this last statement. Marguerite Lazarus died in 2004. See the first comment below for a link to a well-written and heartfelt tribute to her.]

   Here, using the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, as the primary source, is a complete list of her crime-related fiction (the dash (-) indicating only minor relevance to our field.)

   These are the British editions; most if not all have been published in the US, all but one by St. Martin’s. (This list does not include a few novels with no criminous component.)

# Images of Rose (n.) Hodder 1974 [England; 1883]
# The Look of Innocence (n.) Hodder 1975 [England; 1800s]
# A Family Likeness (n.) Hodder 1977 [England; 1800s]
# -Remembering Louise (n.) Hodder 1978
# The Leavetaking (n.) Hodder 1979 [England; 1880s]
# Flowers for Lilian (n.) Hodder 1980 [England; 1800s]
# Miss Bede Is Staying (n.) Piatkus 1982 [England; 1800s]
# The Long Shadow (n.) Piatkus 1983 [England; 1800s]
# A Walk in the Wood (n.) Piatkus 1989 [England; WWII]
# The Wedding Guest (n.) Piatkus 1994 [England; 1920 ca.]

# -A Hint of Witchcraft (n.) Hale 2000 [England]
# A Morning in Eden (n.) Hale 2001 [England; post-WWI.]

   Quoting very briefly from Contemporary Authors:

   While doing some additional research on Peter Driscoll, the author of Pangolin, a spy thriller I reviewed here only a day or so ago, I discovered the sad news of his death, a fact not known to Al Hubin and the Revised Crime Fiction IV before now.

   The Wikipedia entry for Driscoll is not very large. It’s only one sentence long, followed by a list of the books he wrote:

   Taken from an interview with Mr Driscoll and appearing in his entry in Contemporary Authors, he had this to say about his early career:

   Here below is a checklist of all of Peter Driscoll’s crime fiction, expanded upon from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

DRISCOLL, PETER (John). 1942-2005.

      * The White Lie Assignment (n.) Macdonald, UK. hc, 1971. Lippincott, US, 1975. [Albania] “Michael Mannis, a freelance photographer, knew how the Albanian Secret Police dealt with spies. So it took a great deal of money to tempt him into accepting a mission to cross the Albanian frontier and photograph the Chinese missile sites there. He certainly earned it hte hard way when he discovered that his contact was a fugitive double agent with Russian killers waiting for him at the end of the run.”

      * The Wilby Conspiracy (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1973. Lippincott, US, hc, 1972. [South Africa] Film: Optimus, 1975 (scw: Rod Amateau, Harold Nebenzal; dir: Ralph Nelson; starring: Sidney Poitier, Michael Caine). “A white mining engineer plunged into an underground world of intrigue and violence. A beautiful, sensual woman whom he must trust. A black fugitive whom he must save. And hanging in the balance, the fate of a vast, vicious struggle between a clandestine revolutionary organization and a diabolically efficient secret police amid the ugly slums and breathtaking wilderness of present-day Africa.”

      * In Connection with Kilshaw (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1974. Lippincott, US, hc, 1974. [Ireland]

      * The Barboza Credentials (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1976. Lippincott, US, hc, 1976. [Mozambique] “British-born Joe Hickey is charged with finding a mercenary killer in Africa’s dark heart. But time is running out for this ex-cop turned Rhodesian sanctions-buster, and the life he has to save – as the seconds tick relentlessly by – is his own.”

      * Pangolin (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1979. Lippincott, US, hc, 1979. [Hong Kong]

      * -Heritage (n.) Granada, UK, hc, 1982. Doubleday, US, hc, 1982. [Algeria; 1945-62]

      * Spearhead (n.) Bantam, UK, hc, 1988. Little-Brown, US, hc, 1989. [South Africa] “The story of the terror and strife of a South Africa in deep racial conflict. Major Patrick Marriner, a retired British paratrooper and Falklands veteran, is recruited by the Black Nationalist leader Kumalo’s exiled comrades to do the seemingly impossible — free Kumalo before the National Intelligence Service can rid themselves of international humiliation.”

       Secrets of State (n.) Bantam, UK, hc, 1991

       Spoils of War (n.) Bantam, UK, hc, 1994 [Kuwait]

BOB GARLAND – Derfflinger

Manor Books 17181; paperback original. First printing, 1978. Trade paperback reprint: Writer’s Showcase Press, 2000.

   The Manor edition of this title is a very scarce book. As I type this, there is only one copy online on ABE. Manor books never did get distributed very widely, and when (or where) they did, the authors generally never had any “name appeal,” or not at least on the ones that were paperback originals. Usually an author wrote one or maybe two books for them and nobody else, and nobody ever heard from them (the authors) again.

   Which is why it surprised the something out of me to learn that Bob Garland, now a retired business executive, has written a total of four other book-length adventures of Humboldt Prior, computer manufacturing executive for Intercontinental Data Processing, of New York, NY. The order in which the adventures occur and in which the books were published is a little confusing, and I will try to elucidate as best I can.

   The only one published at the time it was written, I think, is the one at hand. As stated above, the book was reprinted as a trade paperback by Writer’s Showcase Press, in October 2000, and as such it is denoted as a Second Edition. (I do not know if the book has been revised for this edition, but there is the possibility, as there is a good chance Manor chopped it up and did a quick “make it fit” procedure on it, even before WordPerfect came along and made it easy.) It is interesting to note, however, that this 2000 edition is described as the “Second Humboldt Prior Mystery.”

   The other books in the series are the following, in order as published. All are trade paperbacks:

R.I.P. 37E: The Third Humboldt Prior Mystery Writer’s Showcase Press, October 2000.

Slaying the Red Slayer: The First Humboldt Prior Adventure. Writers Club Press; 2nd edition, April 2001. [If there was ever a First Edition, I do not know about it.]

The Elephant Mask: The Fourth Humboldt Prior Mystery. iUniverse, January 2004.

Tradedown: The Fifth Humboldt Prior Mystery. iUniverse, December 2005.

   The only one of these last four which I have is a copy of the third adventure, R.I.P. 37E. I have not read it, but from a quick peek inside, the story appears to have taken place in 1979, so there is the possibility that it was written back then, around that time, but it was never published until Garland retired from his day job.

   I’m really reaching now, but on Amazon.com, there is a short description of the last two books that tells us that Prior is “now … aging” (Elephant Mask) and is “now 60 years old” (Tradedown). Which really makes me feel old, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. It could be that these last two books were written recently, and not earlier.

   But where Slaying the Red Slayer fits in as nominally the “first” book in the series, I do not know.

   In any case, Derfflinger certainly reads like a debut appearance, as in it an amateurish but enthusiastic Humboldt Prior agrees to help the widow of a friend in England who had been doing some investigation on his own into a ship salvaging operation conducted at the end of World War II. He was killed in an auto accident, but as Humboldt takes over the investigation, he too becomes the target of some very narrow scrapes.

   The reason the book reads like the first in a series is that Humboldt seems to be awfully new and/or naive in matters which he seems to be in over his head about. Almost, I hasten to add, because he is quite competent at what he normally does, in a global business sense, and he doesn’t mind admitting it.

   With a billion dollar operation behind him (Intercontinental Data), Humboldt gets around fairly easily and comfortably – to Scotland and then to Germany before heading back to England – on the company’s private Jet Star, with various nefarious villains on his tail most of the way.

   Not only is Humboldt amateurish but enthusiastic, but so is the story. It’s enjoyable enough, but until the end, which contains a surprise or two, there’s no meat to the tale at all, nor does it quite connect on many levels. On the other hand, enthusiasm is sometimes all it takes, and even though this may surprise you, given my comments so far, I discovered when I was finished that I really wouldn’t mind reading any of the four follow-up adventures at all.

   And so perhaps I will.

POSTSCRIPT.   If you would like to know something more about the primary focus of the travail that Humboldt encounters, you could do no worse than to look the word Derfflinger up on Google, say. It’s just a suggestion.

[UPDATE] 06-12-08.   To no one’s surprise, I am assuming, including my own, I have not yet read or obtained any of the other books in the series. There is still only one copy of the Manor edition of Derfflinger offered on ABE, and in fact it may be the very same book. I also do not know any more about the publishing history of the Bob Garland’s work than is stated here.

      The first paragraph below is good news recently received from Bill Contento:

    The online edition of THE CRIME FIGHTERS, by W.O.G. Lofts and Derek Adley, has been updated, now listing fictional detectives “Abbott, Detective” through “Hyer, Henry ‘Hank’.”

   Say the authors Derek Adley (1927-1991) and Bill Lofts (1923-1997) in their introduction:

   The information was never published in the authors’ lifetime. Says Al Hubin as part of his editorial introduction, “The text appears to have been written mostly in the 1960s and so does not cover detectives introduced later.”

   The only version of The Crime Fighters still in existence is apparently the photocopy of the original manuscript in the hands of Al Hubin, who’s working with Bill, Steve Holland and others to put the data online.

JOYCE CHRISTMAS – A Better Class of Murder.

Fawcett, paperback original; 1st printing, Dec 2000.

   Question. Did Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple ever appear in a story together? I don’t think so, but I might be wrong. I know that Perry Mason and the detective duo of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam never appeared in the same book. But think about it. Wouldn’t have either one been quite an event? Crossovers like this used to be rare in the comic book field, now it’s so common they do it all the time, even between DC and Marvel, two different publishers and direct competitors, if you will.

   But for mystery fiction, it’s not an everyday occurrence. (*) So to have the first appearance together of Joyce Christmas’s two main characters, Manhattan socialite Lady Margaret Priam (ten previous books) and retired office manager Betty Trenka (four earlier mysteries), well, when it first came out, her fans must have been grabbing the book right off the shelf.

   For me, though, this is the first of either series I’ve read, and it’s (in a word) disappointing. The two characters could not be from two more different worlds, but that’s not the problem. Poirot and Miss Marple are equally opposite in many ways, but just consider the puzzles they might have solved together — I think Agatha Christie could easily have come up with a couple of absolute knockouts. They would have been doozies.

   That’s not the case here. In fact, there’s very little case to be solved, and neither Lady Margaret or Miss Trenka get within 50 miles of the crime itself. Betty Trenka is asked by a neighboring suburbanite, a computer expert by trade, to do another job entirely, one that takes her into New York City, and thus into Lady Margaret’s social set, almost incidentally so. The connection turns out to be a dead woman whose body had been found earlier, back in (further) upstate Connecticut, involved somehow with a missing and essential computer disk.

   As crimes go, this is a rather mild one, and the solution is unravelled more or less perfunctorily, with no further ado or commotion. Lady Margaret has nothing to do but show Betty Trenka around the city, which the latter’s naiveté does make amusing, and perhaps even mildly interesting. All in all, though, what you should expect from this book is a lot more talk than there is action, of which there is none, neither physical nor mental.

COMMENT (*). 06-05-08. It wasn’t true then, and while it may be more true now, crossover appearances between mystery characters still happen only about .01 of 1% percent of the time. Of course in comic books it happens so often that it’s taken for granted, and it’s boring.

         JOYCE CHRISTMAS: A Checklist —

[Expanded upon from her entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. All of her mysteries were published as paperback originals by Fawcett, or in the case of the earlier ones, Fawcett Gold Medal.]

   Lady Margaret Priam

1. Suddenly in Her Sorbet (1988)
2. Simply to Die for (1989)
3. A Fete Worse Than Death (1990)
4. A Stunning Way to Die (1991)
5. Friend or Faux (1991)
6. It’s Her Funeral (1992)
7. A Perfect Day for Dying (1993)
8. Mourning Gloria (1996)
9. Going Out in Style (1998)
10. Dying Well (2000)

   Betty Trenka

1. This Business Is Murder (1993)
2. Death at Face Value (1995)
3. Downsized to Death (1997)
4. Mood to Murder (1999)

   Lady Margaret Priam & Betty Trenka in tandem

1. A Better Class of Murder (2000)
2. Forged in Blood (2002)

JULIETTE LEIGH – The Fifth Proposal.

Zebra, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1999.

   Detective mysteries come concealed in the strangest places. This one, for example, was published as a regency romance, and if you didn’t look closely when it first came out, you probably missed it.

   When Shelby Falcon is summoned to her dear grandfather’s home after learning that he’s gravely ill, she doesn’t know it, but she’s about to become an heiress. Or so he announces, with all the other family members circled around him. In his own mind, though, he has no intentions of dying yet.

   Someone intends to change those intentions, however, and a series of suspicious and potentially fatal accidents begins to happen to the old gentleman. Shelby suspects one of her four cousins, all debtors and heavily in need of money. Another possible perpetrator is the mysterious Gill, whom she’s never seen before, the old man’s new companion and bodyguard.

   As the story goes on, the four cousins in turn make proposals of marriage to Shelby — ah, you do know where this is going, don’t you?

   Well, it is a regency romance, after all. Frothy and light, with only the mystery of Colonel Falcon’s unknown assailant to give it a little added substance. The historical period is adequately evoked, at least within my limited experience in such things, but the dialogue (at times) seems a trifle forced to me, and (if this makes sense) artificially created to fit the time period.

   PS. It all ends well.

[UPDATE] 06-01-08. And in case you were wondering this as well, yes, the book above is in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and in fact, here’s the complete entry for the author, under two names. (Not all of her books were mysteries. Others were Regency Romances only, and are not listed below.)

LEIGH, JULIETTE. Pseudonym of Dawn Aldridge Poore, 1941- .

      The Fifth Proposal (Zebra, 1999, pb) [England; 1800s]
      Sherry’s Comet (Zebra, 1998, pb) [England; 1800s]

POORE, DAWN ALDRIDGE. 1941- . Pseudonym: Juliette Leigh. Series Character: Rozanne Sydney, in all.

      The Brighton Burglar (Zebra, 1993, pb) [England; 1800s] “When it comes to unsolved crimes and unmatched hearts, Miss Roxanne Sydney is on the case! When Miss Sydney’s late father leaves her with a bed-ridden estate and three younger sisters to marry off, the unsinkable Roxanne decides to keep her family afloat by taking in boarders. But opening her home to strangers becomes a dangerous enterprise indeed when Roxanne finds herself embroiled in the current Brighton mystery: Someone is stealing valuable painting from the wealthy country estates…”

      The Cairo Cats (New York & London: Zebra, 1994, pb) [London; 1800s]. “Miss Roxanne Sydney travels to London to attend a wedding, and when one of her two exotic cat statues–artifacts from her father’s Egyptian travels–is stolen, she has a mystery on her hands.”

      The Mummy’s Mirror (Zebra, 1995, pb) [Egypt; 1800s] “With her three sisters finally wed, Miss Roxanne Sydney is free to pursue her favorite pastime: a mystery! Accompanied by Miss Flora Rowe, her poor but proper traveling companion, Roxanne is off to uncover the grandest of all mysteries, the land of Egypt. […] …something decidedly odd is going on between the pyramids and the burning sands. And a missing mirror will soon turn the desert into perilous territory for a genteel detective in distress…and in danger of losing her heart!”

      The Secret Scroll (Zebra, 1993, pb) [England; 1800s] “When an invaluable ancient scroll vanishes on the eve of her sister’s wedding, Miss Roxanne Sydney looks among the visitors at the Sydney estate to find the culprit.”