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.

   I’ve been continuing with the alphabetized listings for the online Addenda for the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. I’m now in the C’s, as you may recall.

   Note that many of these new listings are of film versions of stories and novels already included in CFIV. If such is the case, bibliographic details for the books themselves are omitted.

CHARLES, ROBERT. Pseudonym of Robert Charles Smith, 1938- . Other pseudonym: Charles Leader. Author of numerous spy and adventure novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Add the titles below, and SC: Capt. Mark Falcon = MF, for the two books so indicated.
      Falcon SAS: Blood River. Linford pb, 1999. Setting: Borneo. MF
      Falcon SAS: Firestrike. Linford pb, 1999 MF

      Persons Reported. Linford pb, 2000

CHARLES, THERESA. Pseudonym of Irene Maude Mossop Swatridge, 1905-1988 & Charles John Swatridge, 1896-1964. Add birth and death dates. Under this name, the author of seven books published in the US as gothic romances. Other pseudonyms for Irene Swatridge: Leslie Lance & Jan Tempest. For a short discussion of this author’s books, see this earlier post on the Mystery*File blog.

CHARTERIS, LESLIE
      The Saint Goes West. Show second film as: Lux, 1960, as Le Saint mène la danse, aka The Dance of Death (scw: Albert Simonin, Jacques Nahum, Yvan Audouard; dir: Nahum). SC: Simon Templar (Félix Marten).
      Vendetta for the Saint. [ghostwritten by science fiction writer Harry Harrison] TV movie: ITC, 1969 (scw: Harry W. Junkin, John Kruse; dir: Jim O’Connolly). SC: Simon Templar (Roger Moore).

CHASE, JAMES HADLEY
      My Laugh Comes Last. Film: MGM, 1995, as The Set Up (scw: Michael Thoma; dir: Strathford Hamilton)

CHASTAIN, THOMAS
      Death Stalk. TV movie: Wolper, 1975 (scw: John W. Bloch, Stephen Kandel; dir: Robert Day)

CHESTER, PETER. Pseudonym of Dennis Phillips; other pseudonyms Simon Challis, Peter Chambers & Philip Daniels. As “Peter Chester,” the author of five mystery stories listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. A series character named Johnny Preston is in three of them, although not the one below. A British writer, Phillips was much prolific as “Peter Chambers.” Under this byline he wrote over 35 mystery and detective novels, many with American private eye Mark Preston. Whether Johnny Preston is also a PI is not known. Note that “Peter Chambers” is also the name of the PI who was one of US writer Henry Kane’s most frequent series characters.
      The Traitors. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hc, 1964. Add setting: England

CHESTERTON, G. K. TV movie, based on the Father Brown stories: Marble Arch, 1979, as Sanctuary of Fear (scw: Don M. Mankiewicz, Gordon Cotler; dir: John Llewellyn Moxey). SC: Father Brown (Barnard Hughes)

CHILD, LEE. Add: Pseudonym of James D. Grant, 1954- . Born in England; studied law; living in NYC; TV director turned writer. Author of four “Jack Reacher” novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV through the year 2000; the series continues through the present day. Twelve have appeared so far, with a 13th scheduled for 2009. Reacher is a former Army MP officer who attracts trouble wherever he goes.

FREDRICK D. HUEBNER – The Joshua Sequence.

Fawcett Gold Medal; paperback original. First printing, November 1986.

   [Rather than make any changes, I’m going to leave this review pretty much as it was written, back in early January 1987. You’ll see why in a moment. Keep reading.]

   I guess I’m getting old. It’s not so much that I’ll be 45 years old tomorrow, because I really don’t think that’s what I’m feeling. It’s more that for the past few semesters I’ve gotten the feeling that for the students in my classes, the Vietnam War is something they’ve only read about, in history books, and not from newspapers.

   And here in The Joshua Sequence we have a mystery novel with the root causes based in the early 70s, with the various underground movements, the bombings, the thoughts (carried over from the 60s) that protests could change the world. The longer Seattle lawyer Matt Riordan searches for the killer of former student activist Stephen Turner, now a computer programmer, the more sure he becomes that the reason is connected with Turner’s days with the Weathermen and the Northwest Nine.

   Ancient history. Has it been 15 years ago, already? In the passage of time, most of Turner’s co-conspirators have gone establishment, in one form or another, depending on how you define the term, but there is a secret from those earlier days that one of them does not want revealed. And therein lies the mystery.

   Drugs, and a government cover-up, are also involved. Lacking sufficient muscle, Riordon has to call in a private eye friend from Montana. He also gets too closely involved with his client, the dead man’s sister. You can probably write the rest from here.

   Huebner is also a lawyer, so here in his first novel, he is writing largely what he knows, but every so often I thought his ear for dialogue was off. It may look good in print, but as opposed to the recently reviewed Death of a Harvard Freshman, I don’t think this is the way people really talk. There are an awful lot of typos, too.

   Or maybe I’m just getting cranky in my old age?

[UPDATE] 12-05-08.  No further personal comment is necessary from me, I don’t believe. My copy of the book is packed up and stored away where I can’t get to it, so I don’t have a cover image to show you. Next best thing, though: a cover shot of one of his other Matt Riordan books, then a scan of his most recent book. And why not a complete bibliography for him also, expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

HUEBNER, FREDRICK D. 1955- .     MR = Matthew Riordan.
      * The Joshua Sequence. Gold Medal, pbo, 1986, MR
      * The Black Rose. Gold Medal, pbo, 1987. MR
      * Judgment by Fire. Gold Medal, pbo, 1988. MR
      * Picture Postcard. Columbine, hc, 1990; Gold Medal, ppbk, 1991. MR

      * Methods of Execution. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1994; Gold Medal, ppbk, May 1995. MR
      * Shades of Justice. Simon & Schuster, hc, 2001; Signet, ppbk, Jan 2003.

JUDSON PHILIPS – The Laughter Trap. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1964. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club [3-in-1 edition], December 1964. Paperback reprint: Pinnacle P154N, January 1973.

   Although his work as Hugh Pentecost is better known, Judson Philips has published some excellent novels of suspense and detection under his own name, and created one notable series character — Peter Styles, a national columnist for Newsview magazine who specializes in human-interest stories.

   The Laughter Trap is the first of many novels featuring Styles and dramatizes the tragic events that irrevocably altered the shape of his life and career.

   While on their way home from the Darlbrook Lodge in the Green Mountains of Vermont, Styles and his elderly father, Herbert, a successful but alcoholic advertising executive, are forced off the road by two thrill killers. Herbert Styles dies in the fiery wreck; Peter is thrown free, but sustains a serious injury that forces doctors to amputate his right leg halfway between the ankle and the knee.

   He recovers with the help of a former lover, Liz Connors, whose husband is a doctor specializing in prosthetic devices. His new artificial leg allows him to move around with only the slightest limp, and once he has recovered, he devotes his life to an ongoing search for the men who cost him his father and his leg. His only clue is the “hideous high giggling laugh” he heard before the crash.

   All of this is told in flashback and through conversations with others as Styles returns a year later to Darlbrook Lodge. He has wired for private accommodations, but ends up sharing a room with the lodge’s publicity man, Jim Tranter, through whose eyes we view the rest of the story.

   Styles’s first evening at the lodge is without unusual incident — until he awakens Tranter in the middle of the night, claiming he has again heard the hideous laughter. In the morning, a much more disturbing event is revealed: Two young women staying in one of the cabins — Jane Pritchard and Martha Towers have been brutally stabbed to death. Jane Pritchard’s father appears on the scene, accompanied by his other daughter, Laura, and offers a reward for the apprehension of the slayer.

   Styles interests himself in the investigation, believing the killings and the laughter he heard have a connection. By the time he solves the grisly double homicide, the usually peaceful atmosphere of the mountain lodge has been disrupted by yet another killing, an attempted murder, a melee in the bar, and dangerous undercurrents of hatred and suspicion. But while Styles finds satisfaction in the resolution of the case, he finds only frustration in his search for the driver of the car who took his father’s life.

   Styles continues his quest in such other novels as The Twisted People (1965), Nightmare at Dawn (1970), Walk a Crooked Mile (1975), and Why Murder (1979).

   Of the other series characters created by Philips under his own name, the most interesting are Carole Trevor of the Old Town Detective Agency and her ex-husband, wealthy man-about-town Maxwell Blythe, who appear in two early mysteries: The Death Syndicate (1938) and Death Delivers a Postcard (1939).

         ———

   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.

VICTORIA SILVER – Death of a Harvard Freshman.

Bantam; paperback original; 1st printing, April, 1984.

   Dialogue is an important component of mystery fiction — the most devious plots are often undone by speech patterns that border on either the most stilted or the most incomprehensible, but I am convinced that Harvard freshmen really do talk like the characters in this book. Central Connecticut State (where once I taught) is not Harvard, by any means of comparison, but it is not Outer Slobovia, either, and I think I’m a reasonable person to judge.

   (Mostly I talked to students about courses, grades, and whatever it is that actuaries actually do, and not about personal things like life, sex and whatever else it was that consumed the thinking time of college students back in the mid-1980s, but I still think I’m a reasonable person to judge. Or I was then.)

   Sort of surprisingly enough, this is very much a classical detective story, rather uncommon today, with a limited number of suspects (the fellow members of Lauren Adler’s freshman seminar on the Russian Revolution), a great amount of misdirection in the matter of solving the murder of black student activist Russell Bernard — or rather suspicion directed equally in all directions — and clues derived solely from large amounts of conversation, pieced together from differing accounts of each suspect’s activities and personalities, with very little physical action involved.

   This is also very much an amateur investigation. The police do what they do offstage, and only one faculty member has a major speaking role. Besides the murder — as in the case of Rasputin, perhaps to destroy Russell’s political influence — and its solution, this is also a novel in which each of the characters are seeking their own identity — whether Jewish, black, gay, southern aristocrat, preppie, or L.A. modern.

   I’ll say it again. The characters are real. This is one book I wouldn’t mind reading again, and there are few mysteries I would ever say that about.

Note: Silver’s second mystery, Death of a Radcliffe Roommate (Bantam, 1986), has been published already, and it also features Lauren Adler. Without expanded its borders beyond that of the campus community, this would seem to be a very limited series of books. But as long as I’m nowhere in the vicinity of a school where Lauren’s nearby, I’m really pleased that we haven’t yet seen the last of this fascinating young lady.

[UPDATE] 12-04-08.   Most of the revisions were made to reflect that I’m no longer teaching, so what I know about current students’ speech patterns is rather problematical. What I was comparing, though, were students in the 1980s and they way they talked and the way the students talked in Victoria Silver’s book, which also took place in the 1980s.

   “Victoria Silver,” by the way, is not the author’s real name, and as far as I know, it is not known who the real author was. I suspect that many of the characters in her books were based on people she actually knew. (Googling for more information on her, most of the web pages that came to view were about, you guessed it, Victoria silver.)

   And as I also suspected in the last paragraph of my review, at least between the lines, these were the only two cases of murder in which Lauren Adler ever found herself involved.

W. R. PHILBRICK – Slow Dancer. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1984.

   Mystery fiction has seen more women detectives hang out their shingles in the last five years than in its entire history. Naturally, most of these characters are written by women, fueled by a personal understanding of the modem woman’s changing role. W. R. Philbrick is one of the few men who can write a modem female detective and make us believe her.

   Connie Kale has no one to rely upon but herself. Her dad’s still alive, but a massive stroke has taken his speech and his mobility. A golf pro for thirty years, he can only remind Connie that she’s not the Women’s Golf Champion of the World, a title for which he prepared her since childhood.

   Her first year on the circuit cracked her nerve — something about being a very small fish in a very big pond — and she’s returned to her small New England hometown to start a new career as a private investigator.

   Her clients value her knowledge of the community and her graceful sense of discretion. She cleans up the messes in their lives with no one the wiser — no small talent in a small town.

   In Slow Dancer, though, it looks like she might not pull it off. Mandy O’Hare has gotten herself killed in a sleazy motel room after one of those dives into decadence only the rich can afford. Mandy’s daddy and grampa have always bought her out of trouble before, but this time all they can manage is to keep the sordid details hushed up. Daddy, you see, is running for governor, about to realize grampa’s greatest and last ambition for him. This is grampa’s last gasp, and Mandy’s death, allegedly at the hands of a local male stripper, is not going to stop him.

   This family of aristocrats is being eaten away from within, and grampa wants to know who is rotten and who is not. Connie’s father was the old man’s golf pro, and Connie is practically a member of the family herself. (She and Mandy used to play on the estate together when baby girls.) Old man O’Hare figures if anybody can find out what’s going on and keep her mouth shut about it, Connie can.

   Connie, however, has her doubts. Mandy was a brat, and the family is already tainted by suicide, infidelity, and insanity. Besides, murder is hard to cover up anyway, no matter who you are.

   It’s a Pandora’s box, and by the time Connie lets all the contents out, this great and powerful family is exposed for the cesspool it is, and Connie barely escapes with her life.

   Philbrick writes exceptionally well; his prose sparkles. And he writes Connie well, although women readers might wish to see more of her softer edges than Philbrick shows.

   Philbrick’s other novels are [non-mystery] Shooting Star (1982) and Shadow Kills (1985). The latter will be of particular interest to mystery buffs, as its hero is a mystery writer who is confined to a wheelchair.

         ———

   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.

EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment: Zoraya.

Gold Medal #979. Paperback original; first printing, March 1960. Reprint editions include Gold Medal T2616, 1972, with a new cover (shown).

   Now this. Not putting down any of the other books reviewed this issue, this is the real thing. The eleventh of CIA agent Sam Durell’s violent around-the-world adventures, it possesses a drive and story-telling intensity unmatched by very few writers today.

   I have mentioned before that I don’t read spy thrillers at all any more, but that wasn’t really true. I don’t read today’s bloated novels of Nazi hunts or nuclear conspiracies, and I seldom read convoluted LeCarrean tales of cold war intrigue, but I do read Edward S. Aarons.

   One wonders if Aarons ever travelled to all the places he describes so well. This story takes Durell from sunny Geneva to the picturesque Mediterranean island of Elba to the hot burning deserts surrounding the small Arabian port city of Jidrat, and in each place we get the unmistakable feeling that we are actually there. One suspects it is because Aarons also had a sense of history as well.

   Durell’s mission in this book: to return decadent Prince Amr al-Maari to his homeland, in a last-ditch attempt to provide leadership to a country about to undergo a bloody revolution. Zoraya is his wife, married when she was but eight years old, but repudiated ever since by Amr, she has spent her life simply waiting for him. If anyone can assist Durell in forcing the Prince out of his present life of drunken debauchery, it is she.

   Coincidence is very much a part of every good writer’s stock-in-trade, but unlike the whopping one leading off Nick O’Donohoe’s book [reviewed here not so long ago], only one of Aarons’ characters — the Jewish-Hungarian wife of Major Kolia Mikelnikov, Durell’s Russian counterpart — comes on the scene solely by accident, and even that is made plausible.

   When the stage is set, the drama that then plays itself out on the blood-splattered streets of Jidrat and the besieged palace of Amr’s grandfather is clearly not fun and games.

   Here’s a description of Sam Durell that sums him up pretty well (page 130): “…you do things in the name of duty which you really do not have to do.”

[UPDATE] 12-03-08. Nope, I don’t remember this one either. I could easily read it again, after reading what I had to say, but I haven’t yet read all of the other Sam Durell adventures, so I probably won’t. Not right away, anyway.

   I wonder why I was so down on John Le Carré at the time. I still don’t read bloated novels of Nazi hunts or nuclear conspiracies, but I while I haven’t recently, I have no aversion to reading anything by the man who wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. That’s a book I definitely do remember, and I read it when it first came out.

PAULA PAUL – An Improper Death.

Berkley, paperback original; first printing, November 2002.

   The second mystery adventure of Dr. Alexandra Gladstone has much the same virtues and flaws as the first (Symptoms of Death, May 2002). The problems of being a female doctor in Victorian England are abundantly illustrated. Trying to do surgery on a male patient’s privates, for example, takes a good amount of strategic planning.

   And in general Ms. Paul does a more than credible job in re-creating the life and times of the lower classes; it was a hard life. Where she falters is in the mystery itself, that of the death of a former British admiral, found drowned on the beach near his home, clad only in women’s undergarments (hence the title).

   Constable Snow’s mysterious behavior which follows seems strained and forced, and so do several other incidents. Worse, though, is the killer’s behavior, totally unexplainable, making any attempt to follow the clues all but hopeless.

   So, definitely a mixed bag. Read this for the characters, not for the detective work.

[UPDATE] 12-02-08.   There were only three books in the Dr. Gladstone series:

      Symptoms of Death. Berkley, pbo, May 2002.

      An Improper Death. Berkley, pbo, Nov 2002.
      Half a Mind to Murder. Berkley, pbo, Oct 2003.

   In a series coming before the Gladstone books were three adventures of Hillary Scarborough & Jane Ferguson, a mismatched pair of Southern belle decorators, all as by Paula Carter:

      Leading an Elegant Death. Berkley, pbo, Feb 1999.

      Deathday Party. Berkley, pbo, Oct 1999.
      Red Wine Goes with Murder. Berkley, pbo, July 2000.

   Under her own name and as Catherine Monroe, Paula Paul has also written a number of other books, most of them historical fiction or romantic suspense.

WALTER SATTERTHWAIT – Dead Horse. Denis McMillan Publications, hardcover, 2006.

   Sattherwait’s novel speculates on the private relationship of [pulp author] Raoul Whitfield and his socialite wife, Mrs. Emily Davies Vanderbilt Thayer Whitfield, who was found dead of a gunshot wound in 1935, a death that was never explained to anyone’s satisfaction.

   Satterthwait’s extensive research only serves to strengthen the plausibility of his depiction of the doomed marriage and ill-matched couple, and the terse, finely honed prose is a fitting tribute to a mystery writer of uncommon stylistic gifts.

      ___

   Bibliographic data: RAOUL WHITFIELD.   Expanded from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Criminous novels and collections only:

WHITFIELD, RAOUL (Falconia). 1896-1945; pseudonym: Temple Field.

      * Green Ice. Knopf, 1930; No Exit Press, UK, 1988. Hardcover reprint: Grosset & Dunlap, early 1930s. Reprinted in 3 Star Omnibus: Trent’s Last Case, Green Ice, The Middle Temple Murder, Knopf, 1936. Later hardcover reprint: Gregg Press, 1980. Also published as: The Green Ice Murders. Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #46, pb, 1947. Later paperback reprints: Avon PN373, 1971; Quill, 1986.

      * Death in a Bowl. Knopf, 1931; No Exit Press, UK, 1988. Paperback reprints: Avon PN337, 1970; Quill, 1986.

      * The Virgin Kills. Knopf, 1932; No Exit Press, UK, 1988. Paperback reprint: Quill, 1986.
      * Jo Gar’s Casebook. Crippen & Landru, hc, 2002. Story collection. RD = Originally published as by Ramon Decolta:

FIELD, TEMPLE. Pseudonym of Raoul F. Whitfield, 1896-1945.

      * Five. Farrar & Rinehart, 1931.
      * Killer’s Carnival. Farrar & Rinehart, 1932.

NICK O’DONOHUE – Wind Chill.

Paperjacks, paperback original, 1985.

   By rights, in a world that was absolutely perfect, this would have followed my review of L.A.Taylor’s Only Half a Hoax, as here is another book taking place in the twin cities area of Minneapolis-St. Paul. And if that weren’t connection enough, in 180 degree contrast (well, at least well over 60), this one takes place in the dead of winter, whereas what happened in that earlier book occurred instead in the balmy breezes (relatively speaking) of April.

   Ice fishing on a Minnesota lake on New Year’s Day is not my idea of a lark, nor that of private eye Nathan Phillips either. Especially when the first catch he and his fishing buddy, homicide lieutenant Jon Pederson, make that day is that of a waterlogged corpse which has been mutilated beyond recognition.

   And as a coincidence beyond belief, the body is somehow related to a case Pederson and the FBl have been working on, and now Phillips is involved too. As is the IRA, and a host of new clients for Phillips, attracted by the publicity, he guesses, but all of them, strangely, with Irish-sounding names.

   There is also a great deal of blackmail going around. You would not believe who is blackmailing who — and that is the problem with this book. I didn’t believe it. While O’Donohoe tries hard, he never did convince me. He has a nice easy style, for the most part, but every once in a while I found myself stopping short with a passage that simply stumped me for a moment.

   It is like listening to someone who is either afflicted with a faulty (or very selective) memory or (less seriously?) with an incurable habit of going off at wrong angles.

   Angles, at least, I wasn’t expecting. I don’t know if the problem was in the editing and the proofreading (or lack thereof), or if it was just me. Simply say that something failed to click — but when Phillips admits on page 194 that “I’d been stupid,” I could only nod my head, in complete agreement.

[UPDATE] 12-01-08.  Even with my review notes on the book, I don’t remember anything more about it than what I said back then, over 20 years ago. I may not have sounded very positive about it in my comments, but if I’m willing to give him another try, then I see no reason why you shouldn’t.

   I also don’t have a cover image to show you, since my own copy is buried away somewhere and essentially inaccessible. We’re therefore making do with the cover of another of Nathan Phillips’s adventures, as you’ll see here to the right:

   Besides the three of them in the same series (see below), O’Donohue has one other entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, an SF-fantasy novel with some criminous content. He also wrote a small handful of other fantasy paperbacks, but none of them cry out to be mentioned here.

O’DONOHOE, NICK   [i.e., Nicholas Benjamin O’Donohoe].   1952-  .

      * April Snow. Raven House, 1981. [Nathan Phillips]
      * Wind Chill. PaperJacks, 1985. [Nathan Phillips]
      * Open Season. PaperJacks, 1986. [Nathan Phillips]
      * Too Too Solid Flesh. TSR, 1989. [New York City, NY; Future]