William Campbell Gault was a writer of the old school, a consummate professional throughout a distinguished career that spanned more than half a century. From 1936 to 1995 he published scores of novels, both mysteries and juvenile sports fiction and hundreds of short stories, and counted among his awards an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America, and the Life Achievement Award from the, Private Eye Writers of America.

   Noted author and critic Anthony Boucher said of him: “(He is) a fresh voice — a writer who sounds like nobody else, who has ideas of his own ,and his own way of uttering them.” Another of his peers, Dorothy B. Hughes, stated that he “writes with passion, beauty, and with an ineffable sadness which has been previously been found only in Raymond Chandler.”

   He was in his mid-20s when he entered a story called “Inadequate” in a Milwaukee Journal-McClure Newspaper Syndicate short story contest. The judges found it to be anything but inadequate, awarding it the $50 first prize. Spurred on by this success, he wrote and placed several more stories with the McClure Syndicate, then in 1937 entered the wide-open pulp field with the sale of a drag-racing story, “Hell Driver’s Partnership,” to Ace Sports.

   Over the next fifteen years he was a prolific provider of mystery, detection, sports, both light and racy romance, and science fiction to such pulps as 10-Story Detective (where his first criminous story, “Crime Collection,” appeared in January of 1940), Detective Fiction Weekly, The Shadow, Clues, All-American Football, Strange Detective Mysteries, Adventure, Dime Mystery, Dime Detective, Doc Savage, Argosy, Detective Tales, Five Novels Monthly, and Thrilling Wonder and to such “slick” and specialty magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Grit, and McClure’s.

   In the late forties he was featured on the covers of the king of the detective magazines, Black Mask, in whose pages he published nine stories, five of them featuring an offbeat, Duesenberg-driving private detective named Mortimer Jones.

   When the pulp markets collapsed in the early fifties, Gault turned his hand to book-length works. He published the first of his 33 novels for young readers, Thunder Road, in 1952, a work which stayed in print for more than three decades. Appearing that same year was his first mystery, Don’t Cry for Me, one of the seminal crime novels of its time.

   Prior to Don’t Cry for Me, the emphasis in mystery fiction was on its whodunit / whydunit aspects. Gault’s novel broke new ground in that its whodunit elements are subordinate to the personal lives of its major characters and to a razor-sharp depiction of the socioeconomic aspects of its era — an accepted and widely practiced approach utilized by many of today’s best writers in the field.

   His fellow crime novelist, Fredric Brown, said of the novel: “[It] is not only a beautiful chunk of story but, refreshingly, it’s about people instead of characters, people so real and vivid that you’ll think you know them personally. Even more important, this boy Gault can write, never badly and sometimes like an angel.”

   The Mystery Writers of America agreed, voting Don’t Cry for Me a Best First Novel Edgar. Gault’s subsequent mysteries are likewise novels of character and social commentary, whether featuring average individuals or professional detectives as protagonists.

   Many have unusual and/or sports backgrounds, in particular his non-series works. The Bloody Bokhara (1952) deals with the selling of valuable Oriental rugs and carpets in his native Milwaukee; Blood on the Boards (1953) has a little-theater setting in the Los Angeles area; The Canvas Coffin (1953) concerns the fight game and is narrated by a middleweight champion boxer; Fair Prey (1956, as by Will Duke) has a golfing background; Death Out of Focus (1959) is about Hollywood filmmakers and script writers, told from an insider’s point of the-view.

   An entirely different and powerful take on the Hollywood grist mill is the subject matter of his only mainstream novel, Man Alone, written in 1957 but not published until shortly before his death in 1995.

   The bulk of Gault’s 31 criminous novels — and many of his short stories showcase series detectives. One of the first was Mortimer Jones, in the pages of Black Mask; another pulp creation, Honolulu private eye Sandy McKane, debuted in Thrilling Detective in 1947.

   Italian P.I. Joe Puma, who operates out of Los Angeles, was created for the paperback original market in the fifties, first as the narrator of a pseudonymous novel, Shakedown (1953, as by Roney Scott), and then of several books published under Gault’s own name between 1958 and 1961, notably Night Lady and The Hundred-Dollar Girl.

   His last and most successful fictional detective was Brock “The Rock” Callahan, an ex-L.A. Rams lineman turned private eye, who first appeared in Ring Around Rosa in 1955. Callahan, along with his lady friend, interior decorator Jan Bonnet, did duty in six novels over the next eight years. In a rave review of Day of the Ram (1956), The New York Times called Callahan “surely one of the major private detectives created in American fiction since Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe.”

   After the publication of Dead Hero in 1963, Gault abandoned detective fiction to concentrate on the more lucrative juvenile market. It was nearly twenty years before he returned to the mystery field; and when he did return, it was exclusively with stories of an older, wiser, married (to Jan Bonnet), inheritance-wealthy, and semi-retired Brock Callahan.

   The new series of Callahan books began with The Bad Samaritan (1982); six others followed, culminating with Dead Pigeon in 1992. In The Cana Diversion (1982) Gault also brought back Joe Puma — dead. The novel’s central premise is Puma’s murder and Callahan’s search for the killer, a tour de force that earned a Private Eye Writers of America Shamus for Best Paperback Original.

   The hallmarks of Bill Gault’s fiction are finely tuned dialogue, wry humor, sharp social observation, a vivid evocation of both upper class and bottom-feeder lifestyles, and most importantly, the portrayal of people, in Fredric Brown’s words, so real and vivid that you’ll think you know them personally.

    — This essay first appeared as the introduction to The Marksman and Other Stories, by William Campbell Gault and edited by Bill Pronzini (Crippen & Landru, hardcover, March 2003). Reprinted with the permission of Bill Pronzini.

ALBERT CONROY – Devil in Dungarees. Crest 349; paperback original, 1st printing, January 1960.

   As opposed to my comments at the end of my review of Murder Gets a Degree, the sexual behavior and general lasciviousness exhibited by the characters in this book bothered me not at all. For the most part, it’s because it’s an integral part of the plot (see below), but there is another reason, one which I haven’t fully formulated, or if I have, maybe I haven’t even convinced myself it’s true. (I don’t mean to sound mysterious, but if I do, you’re just going to have to live with it.)

   This bit of authentic Americana falls into a category no longer as common as it used to be in written fiction, but the theme has recently been picked up on by the movies — films such as Body Heat are direct descendants of the type. That is to say, a tale in which a good but severely flawed male is corrupted by the pleasures of the flesh, as embodied (and how!) by a young wanton of the opposite sex.

   In this one, it is a cop who goes bad — and so does the bank job he’s persuaded to lend a hand on. It is therefore not so much Peggy’s story, in spite of the spectacular entrance she makes, straight from the shower, but Walt Bonner’s, and that of Ben Travis, his partner on the force.

   Albert Conroy (quite possibly a pseudonym) wrote something less than a dozen books of the same vintage and era (late 50s and early 60s), although there was a Al Conroy who wrote some Mafia-type books for Lancer during the 70s. He’s not the type of writer to make any reference books other than Hubin, but this book at least is a humdinger. Once the bank caper goes awry, and the chase begins, the pace never sags in the least.

   It would make a terrific movie, filmed exactly as written, of the type starring Richard Widmark, Lee Marvin, and Edmond O’Brien. (I haven’t yet decided whom I’d want to see playing Peggy.)

[UPDATE] 11-29-08.  First of all, I have no idea what I was referring to at the end of the first paragraph. I could guess, but I might be wrong, and you’d probably be no better off either way, would you?

   But more importantly — and I’m sure many of you caught this right away — it’s now fairly well known that Albert Conroy was indeed a pen name, and for Marvin H. Albert, who wrote tons of books under his own name and others, not only mysteries, but westerns and movie tie-ins, too.

   Nor am I the only one who likes Devil in Dungarees. Bill Crider does too, so much so that he wrote a Gold Medal Corner column about him for me a few years ago.

   It’s online here, and not only does it have the same cover image as on this post, as well as several more, but I expanded it by putting together a complete bibliography for Albert/Conroy/Nick Quarry/Tony Rome and all of his other bylines.

   You should go read it, and I hope you do.

   Of perhaps major significance or importance, let me announce first that I recently uploaded Part 30 of the online Addenda to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, 1749-2000. It’s a long list of recently discovered additions and corrections, largely a matter of birth and death dates and setting of stories, but as always, there are books newly listed, new series characters determined, and new biographical data about the authors.

   I’ve not had a chance to do any of the annotating that I usually do: adding links and cover images and the like. It’s just the facts, as some TV detective is well-known for saying, or is supposed to have said, which are not quite the same thing.

   What I have been doing in this regard is merging Parts 1 and 2 with Part 3 in alphabetical order, A through H so far. To demonstrate, here’s a section of authors whose last names begin with B. And as always, if you know anything more about any of these authors, do let me know about it.

CAREY, BASIL. 1898-? Born in Plymouth, England; author of a number of thriller novels published between 1926 and 1937, some reprinted in the US.
      Gray Amber. Add British edition: Constable, hc, 1930. US edition: Clode, hc, 1930.

CAREY, DONNELL. Pseudonym of Joe Barry Lake, 1909-1961; other pseudonym: Joe Barry. Under this pen name the author of one book included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV; see below:
      Kisses Can Kill. Phantom, US, pb, 1951. Comyns, ca.1952. “The amazing story of a birthmark that solved a savage murder!”

CARR, JOHN DICKSON.
      The Burning Court. TV movie [series episode/Dow Hour of Great Mysteries]: NBC, 1960 (scw: Kelley Roos [Audrey Roos & William Roos]; dir: Paul Nickell). [Note: Audrey and William Roos won an Edgar from the MWA for their television script.] Note: For more on the Dow TV series, see this earlier post on the M*F blog.

CARTER, ANGELA.
      The Bloody Chamber and other stories. Film: The Company of Wolves, based on ss in this collection: Cannon, 1984 (scw & dir: Neil Jordan)

CARTER, JOHN.
      The Eagle’s Nest. Novelization of TV movie [series episode/The New Avengers]: TV1, 1976 (scw: Brian Clemens; dir: Desmond Davis). SC: The New Avengers: John Steed (Patrick Macnee), Mike Gambit (Gareth Hunt) and Purdey (Joanna Lumley).

CARTER, MARY. Pseudonym.
      Prisoner Cell Block H: Trials of Erica. Pinnacle, 1981. (Novelization of the Australian TV series Prisoner; distributed in the UK and the US as Prisoner: Cell Block H, and in Canada as Caged Women.) SC: Regular cast members including prison governor Erica Davidson (Patsy King).

CASTLE, JOHN. [Joint pseudonym of John William Garrod & Ronald Charles Payne.]
      Flight Into Danger (with Arthur Hailey). TV movie: CBS, 1971, as Terror in the Sky (scw: Elinor Karpf, Steven Karpf, Dick Nelson; dir: Bernard L. Kowalski)

CAUSEY, JAMES O(LIVER, JR.) 1924-2003. Replace tentative years of birth and death with correct ones and add full name. Author of three crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
      The Baby Doll Murders. Gold Medal, US, pb, 1957; Fawcett, UK, pb, , 1959.

      Frenzy. Crest, pb, 1960. [Reviewed by Bill Crider on his blog.]

      Killer Take All! Graphic, US, pb, 1957. Hale, UK, hc, 1960.

THEODORA WENDER – Murder Gets a Degree. Avon; paperback original, October 1986.

   A slim book, at 150 pages (of large print), it still packs a wallop of intensity, emotional drive and impact.

   It is also the second fictional collaboration of Wading River’s chief of police Alden Chase with Glad Gold, female professor of English at Turnbull College, the first being Knight Must Fall (Avon, pbo, 1985), in which the former president of the school was murdered and his body thrown into a pool.

   Wading River is based on a good many New England towns of the same type — this time apparently of the Rhode Island variety. Providence, H. P. Lovecraft’s hometown, is nearby, and witchcraft, black magic and secret covens figure prominently in the death of poor addled Adah Storm, the last descendant of a long line of permanent Wading River residents.

   She even dies on Halloween, but the none of all this has much to do with her murder or the destruction of her home by fire. The motive lies elsewhere, for which I give thanks, as in the context of detective fiction I often find sorcery and contact with evil spirits invariably making for barely tolerable reading.

   As another of the new authors recently published by Avon, Theodora Wender does a capable job of misleading the reader with the real clues uncovered by Chase and Gold, but any reader who is paying attention should easily decipher the killer’s identity.

   The occasional propensity for using four-letter words seems misplaced in this particular setting and type of story, however, and I while I am happy for Chase and Gold’s delight in each other, I found their tendency to jump into bed (or the equivalent) at every opportunity (so to speak, and hardly explicitly) something I’d somehow (curiously) rather they’d do off-page.

[UPDATE] 11-27-08.   I know a little more about the author than I did in 1987. The two books were the only two mysteries she wrote, and from Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV we learn that the author’s real name was Dorothea S. Wender. She was born in 1934 and died in 2003.

   This helped me use Google to good advantage, allowing me to discover that “Dorothea Schmidt Wender was born in 1934 in Ohio and graduated from Radcliffe College, and then went to the University of Minnesota and Harvard University. She has been Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Classics at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. Her publications include book reviews and scholarly articles.”

   One of her scholarly publications was a translation of a book by ancient Greek authors Hesiod and Theognis: Theogony, Works and Days, and Elegies (Penguin Classics).

   I confess that at this relatively late date I do not remember much about the book, but what I said at the time makes me (a) feel like reading it again, and (b) wish that there had been more in the series.

STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Beyond Blame.

Villard, hardcover, 1985; paperback reprint: Ballantine, January 1987.

   Synchronicity strikes again! In A Deadly Sickness, the John Penn mystery reviewed here not long ago, a local doctor is left a painting by Corot in a dead man’ s will. In Beyond Blame, Stephen Greenleaf’s latest case for California private eye John Marshall Tanner, the father of the law professor accused of his wife’s brutal mutilation murder has a painting by Corot in his front parlor.

   So, yes, I’m stretching it. (I have to admit I’d never heard of Corot before this week, but sometimes certain things just stick in your brain and jump out at you like this.) The point is, though, this is the only point in common to the two books. From a small village in England to the streets of present-day Berkeley is a trip more than a world apart. The number of deaths works out to be about the same in each, but in the Greenleaf booK the nature of the beast shows its true colors in biting, bone-chilling detail.

   Here’s the main theme of Greenleaf’s book: concerning those shown to be guilty of a crime, but deemed to be insane at the time of its commission, how blameless should they be considered in the eyes of the law?

   Also up for considerable discussion are: the proper role of law school in guiding their students to their destinies; the inadequacies and ineptness of the American penal system; and how the Free Speech movement of the 60’s has turned into nothing more than a sour dream.

   Through Tanner’s eyes, at least, we see only one extreme, the worst of the today’s contemporary drug underculture; the sad abandonment of a cause; and the broken and crazed psyches left fluttering in its wake. This is a depressing work of fiction; its aim is truth, not beauty. While the former is always debatable, in this book, I guarantee there is not much of the latter.

   A comment on the mystery (there is one, if your mind is not totally distracted by other matters before you reach the solution): the facts fit nicely together, but I couldn’t help but feel cheated by Tanner’s escape from the killer in the closing scene staged at the university’s Greek Theater. Dramatic, yes, and pure luck as well.

[UPDATE] 11-26-08.  One of the reasons I write reviews like this for almost every mystery I read is so that I won’t forget what I read and how I liked a given book. In this case, almost nothing came back, either writing the review or reading the book. I’d read it again, but I confess that my review didn’t encourage me very much to do so. I have a feeling that I’m going to have to be in the right sort of mood before I do.

   But I do admire what Stephen Greenleaf was trying to do in this book, and there are many other Greenleaf books I haven’t read. My review isn’t going to persuade me not to read any of those, and if you’re a private eye fan, especially one with a middle-to-left persuasion, it shouldn’t do so for you either.

   For a long overview of his books by Ed Lynskey, and an interview we did with the author several years ago, may I recommend that you go here on the main Mystery*File website. You’ll find a complete bibliography there as well.

   Last Thursday I posted an old review I’d done of The Last Man Standing, by Jim Wright. With a little bit of luck I was able to track Mr. Wright down. When I sent him an email link to the review, he graciously answered back to tell me more about himself and the two mysteries he wrote.

   I’ve revised the followup comment I posted with that review to include his reply. Here’s the easy link to find it.

JOHN PENN – A Deadly Sickness.

Bantam, reprint paperback; 1st printing, Nov 1986. Hardcover edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985. UK first edition: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1985.

   There is a type of British detective story I read and greatly enjoy, and I’d have to say that Agatha Christie represents it best.

   It’s an old-fashioned sort of story, one seldom taking place in London, but rather in one of the many villages England seems to be endlessly populated with. The police may take part, but the primary focus is often on other main characters, all of whom are more or less involved with the mystery, some more than others.

   And so, I have discovered John Penn. Everything I said above seems to apply. The first case Detective Superintendent Thorne and Sergeant Abbot worked on together seems to have been A Will to Kill, also recently published by Bantam. As in this one, a young girl is the key figure, and the same local doctor makes an appearance in each.

   In fact he is more of a main character in this one, as the police make only a late and mostly routine appearance in finally solving the death of the wealthy Sir Oliver Poston. The identity of the killer is unknown to the reader, of course, but what’s also a mystery, for a while, is what actually happened after his heir’s drunken accident on the occasion of his 40th birthday, preceding the death of his father. (Of the whole crowd, only the young girl mentioned above seems not to know.)

   As I am aware that most of you are completely capable of reading between the lines, I have probably said too much already. For that reason, I liked A Will to Kill more, but sometimes even when you know what’s going to happen, it’s fascinating to watch well-developed characters as they go through their paces.

[UPDATE] 11-24-08.  By some strange coincidence, when I used my computer to check the date just now, it also told me the time, which was exactly 11:24. I think this may be the day I should buy a whole stack of lottery tickets!

    When I wrote this review, over 20 years ago, I was rather down on British mystery and thriller fiction. How do I know? I deleted the first two paragraphs, neither of which do you see here, nor will you ever see them.

    I’ve changed my mind about British detective stories in the meantime. Maybe I’ve slowed down and I enjoy the pace of the older “humdrums” (of which category I do not consider the above to be an example) a lot more than I did when I was younger, but the glitz and glamour of present-day London and other larger cities, with all of their problems with the younger generation and immigrant populations, holds a lot of interest for me as well.

    I believe what remains of the review reads smoothly enough. Enough time has elapsed enough since I wrote it that I cannot tell you, however, whether the doctor figure that I mentioned was the same person, or if I meant to use him as a generic character.

    “John Penn,” and I did not know this when I wrote the review, was the joint pseudonym of Paula Harcourt and John H. Trotman. The latter did not write any mystery fiction of his own, but the former, who died in 1999, has a list of over 20 books to her individual credit in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, mostly of the espionage thriller variety, from what I can deduce from their titles.

    From CFIV then, here’s a list of all of John Penn’s work. Series characters: GT = Insp. (Supt.) George Thorne; DT = Chief Insp. (Supt.) Dick Tansey. (Most of the Tansey books have never been published in the US.)

* Notice of Death (n.) Collins 1982
* Deceitful Death (n.) Collins 1983
* A Will to Kill (n.) Collins 1983. GT
* Mortal Term (n.) Collins 1984. GT

* A Deadly Sickness (n.) Collins 1985. GT
* Barren Revenge (n.) Collins 1986. GT
* Unto the Grave (n.) Collins 1986. GT
* Accident Prone (n.) Collins 1987. GT
* Outrageous Exposures (n.) Collins 1988. DT

* A Feast of Death (n.) Collins 1989. DT
* A Killing to Hide (n.) Collins 1990. DT
* Death’s Long Shadow (n.) Collins 1991. DT
* A Knife Ill-Used (n.) Collins 1991. DT
* A Legacy of Death (n.) Collins 1992. DT
* A Haven of Danger (n.) Collins 1993. DT
* Widow’s End (n.) Collins 1993. DT
* The Guilty Party (n.) Collins 1994. DT
* So Many Steps to Death (n.) Collins 1995. DT
* Bridal Shroud (n.) Collins 1996. DT

* Sterner Stuff (n.) Collins 1997. DT

STEPHANIE BARRON – Jane and the Stillroom Maid: Being the Fifth Jane Austen Mystery.

Bantam, hardcover; August 2000. Reprint paperback, May 2001.

   Never having read any of Jane Austen’s works, or at least none that I can recall, I may not be the ideal person to be reviewing this book. On the other hand, speaking as a mystery fan, I thought the Jane Austen in this make-believe fiction does superbly well in her role as a full-fledged detective. By way of presentation, the book is related to us by her “editor” Stephanie Barron (a/k/a Francine Matthews), and I enjoyed it immensely.

   The year of the text is 1806, when it was entirely possible that Jane Austen could have been visiting Derbyshire, where she could have seen the house she used as an inspiration for Pemberley, the grand manor in the novel, as Barron says, “we now know as Pride and Prejudice.”

   And if she were in Derbyshire, is it not possible that she could have been once again (see the subtitle) involved in a murder there, this time of an apothecary maid in the most mysterious of circumstances?

   This is a well-plotted, well-told throwback to the Golden Age of detective fiction, in my humble opinion, with complication piled on complication. The maid has been shot in the forehead, but her body has been mutilated in a manner such as to cast blame on the demonic Masons the local folk fear so greatly. A sacrifice of some sort? More, and perhaps most puzzling, she is dressed in men’s clothing.

   Jane’s investigation — for definitely no timid wallflower is she — suggests that the maid’s death involves those well above her station. For many reasons, there are many who are not displeased that she is dead. Once again Lord Harold, the Gentleman Rogue in Jane’s life, is available to give her entrance to the world of the local gentry; if not for him, doors otherwise opened would have remained closed, and the case would never have been solved.

   Told in what satisfies me as being Jane Austen’s own words, with touches of delicate humor throughout, here’s a trip back in time I can’t recommend more. Charming and delectable; a complete pleasure.

   Bibliographic data:

      The JANE AUSTEN series —

1. Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (1996)

2. Jane and the Man of the Cloth (1997)
3. Jane and the Wandering Eye (1998)
4. Jane and the Genius of the Place (1999)
5. Jane and the Stillroom Maid (2000)
6. Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (2001)
7. Jane and the Ghosts of Netley (2003)
8. Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy (2005)
9. Jane and the Barque of Frailty (2006)

   Stephanie Barron’s most recent book, A Flaw in the Blood (Feb 2008), may be the first in a new historical series. In this one Irish barrister Patrick Fitzgerald, along with his ward Georgiana “Georgie” Armistead, initiates an enquiry into the death of Queen Victoria’s beloved Prince Albert.

STEPHEN BOOTH – Scared to Live. HarperCollins, UK, hardcover, 2006; Bantam, US, hc, May 2008.

      —, Dying to Sin, 2007. HarperCollins, UK, hc, Sept 2007.

   I’m not going to mince words about the latest installment in this British rural procedural series: it’s far too long for the interest it generates in its investigation, of the murder of a middle-aged woman who turns out not to be what she seems to be.

   Booth has always reveled in details about the region but the protracted and not really very interesting investigation, and, in particular, the handling of one of his two main characters, D.S. Diane Fry, sapped much of my interest in the novel.

   Diane is an outsider to the region and has become increasingly dissatisfied with her job (and life), and Booth, perhaps himself dissatisfied with the character, has no firm sense of the direction in which he might take her. I didn’t find the character “development,” if that’s what it is, believable. She just comes across as unhappy and unpleasant, and any sympathy I’ve felt earlier for this troubled D.S. greatly diminished.

   I can only hope that Booth gets a firmer grip on her character in the next novel although I’m not really sure that I care to see if he does.

   [ … ]

   As an addendum to this rather glum take on Booth’s novel, I’m happy to report that the next novel, Dying to Sin, finds Booth in a return to form, with DS Fry and DC Cooper working together to trace the history of skeletons turned up in ground breaking work by the new owner of a local farm, a history that will lead to a third body and a trail of abuse and murder that leads the investigators far afield in their attempts to identify the remains and track down the perpetrators.

   The novel is also a record of the tremendous changes in farming and landowning that are transforming the landscape of rural England. Fry is perhaps no more content with her present assignment than she was in the preceding novel, but she’s able to work effectively within its framework and the more settled Ben Cooper.

DEBORAH DONNELLY – Died to Match.

Dell, paperback original; 1st printing, October 2002.

   I missed the first one, of course, but I managed to catch up with Deborah Donnelly in this, her second mystery novel. The protagonist in both is Carnegie Kincaid, who’s a high-profile wedding planner in the city of Seattle. While she’s not number one, her clientele still consists of some of the wealthier big-names in town.

   In Died to Match an engagement masquerade party for two of the latter — wealthy big-names, that is — held at the Seattle Aquarium, results in one bridesmaid falling (or jumping or being pushed) into the ocean. Later on yet another one — a bridesmaid, that is — is found murdered in an exhibit with her head crushed in.

   There are a lot of characters to keep track of, which has the advantage of providing a host of possible suspects, but some of them seem to come and go without being fully introduced. Carnegie has a male friend, a newspaper reporter named Aaron, with whom she is having a touch-and-go almost romance. He seems to be the unthreatened jealous type. She thinks he smokes too much.

   The book itself is just over 300 pages long. About half of it is devoted to the various vicissitudes of the wedding planning business, Carnegie’s off-and-on affair with Aaron, and me just in general wondering why the wedding is going on as scheduled with someone (seemingly) stalking the bridesmaids like this.

   Donnelly does some fast talking and shuffling around to explain this (reference Aunt Enid, who may live not much longer) and lest I seem to be neglecting the other half of the book, she does a better-than-average job of providing all of the clues, false leads, and other required paraphernalia of an honest-to-goodness detective story.

   I doubt that I’m among the primary audience intended for this book, but in all honesty, Deborah Donnelly certainly delivers everything her readers are looking for, and maybe others, like me, who are satisfied as well.

[UPDATE]  11-22-08. For whatever reason, the wedding planner ambiance, or the fact that the books were a rare breed these days, fully clued detective stories (or hopefully, a combination of both), the series seems to have caught on, at least for a while. There are six of them in all; you’ll find a complete list below. The bad news is that the last one came out nearly two years ago, and there’s not been another one since.

  Veiled Threats. Dell, pbo, Jan 2002. “In the first Wedding Planner Mystery, Carnegie ventures off her Seattle house-boat to deal with a handsome suitor, an annoying reporter, and a kidnapped bride.”

  Died To Match. Dell, pbo, Oct 2002. “When a Halloween engagement party turns murderous, Carnegie finds herself costumed as a bridesmaid and stalked by a killer!”

  May the Best Man Die. Dell, pbo, Sept 2003. “In this Yuletide caper, Carnegie encounters a drowning at a bachelor party, a stripper in a Santa suit, and a murderous chase through a coffee roasting plant…”

  Death Takes a Honeymoon. Dell, pbo, Apr 2005. “Where there’s smoke, there’s murder, in this fiery tale of smoldering smokejumpers, hot-tempered actresses, and a super-heated Sun Valley summer.”

  You May Now Kill The Bride. Dell, pbo, Jan 2006. “On picturesque San Juan Island, love and lavender are in the air. But so are poisonous gossip, passionate jealousy…and murder.”

  Bride and Doom. Dell, pbo, Dec 2006. “When a baseball-themed engagement party is crashed by a corpse, Carnegie steps up to the plate to clear her pal of murder. Too bad her fiancé Aaron has suddenly come down with Relationship Deficit Disorder…”

   Note: The short synopses above came from Deborah Donnelly’s website.