SUED FOR LIBEL. RKO Radio Pictures, 1939. Kent Taylor, Linda Hayes, Lilian Bond, Morgan Conway, Richard Lane. Based on a story by Wolfe Kaufman. Director: Leslie Goodwins.

   I don’t know about you, but while watching the cast credits go by at the beginning of this movie, Kent Taylor was the only one I recognized right away. Morgan Conway I knew played Dick Tracy in a couple of films later on, but the others, including the two ladies, were only names to me, and more about them later.

   But whenever the star appeal is as low as this, as it was to me, I start thinking “low budget.” And on occasion, starting with low expectations is not all that bad, as this rather generic detective film met or surpassed those low expectations, and then some. Not by a mile, I grant you, but at least by a hair. It’s built around a radio program put on by a newspaper to dramatize the day’s events live. Being an Old Time Radio fan myself, that was a plus right there.

   Thanks to a practical joke one reporter (Linda Hayes) plays on another (Richard Lane), the program directed by a third (Kent Taylor) gets the jury’s verdict in a murder case backwards, “guilty” instead of “innocent.”

   Hence the title of the movie. To win the resulting lawsuit, it is up to the threesome above to solve the murder themselves, and with degrees of trepidation and humor, they do. Morgan Conway is the accused murderer, and Lilian Bond is the wife of the murdered man who’s also a close friend of the defendant. Maybe you could write your own scenario from this.

Lilian Bond

   Wolfe Kaufman, who did write the story, which holds water only as long as you don’t watch too closely, has one title listed in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV: an Inner Sanctum Mystery entitled I Hate Blondes, published by Simon & Schuster in 1946. Kent Taylor, an actor in the Clark Gable vein, but nowhere near as successful, later played Boston Blackie on TV, and Clark Gable didn’t.

   Lilian Bond plays her role in the courtroom strictly on the straight and narrow, but later on when the hairpins start flying, she becomes quite a looker, even though her career never went anywhere. I think it should have. That’s her photo up above, but (truth in advertising) she never looked like that in this film, no matter what I just said.

   As for Linda Hayes, the snappy gal reporter lady, her career lasted only for 17 movies, all filmed between 1939 and 1942. She may be more famous as the mother of Cathy Lee Crosby, who later briefly played the super-powered crimefighter Wonder Woman on television. Perhaps you can see the resemblance.

GILLIAN LINSCOTT – Widow’s Peak

Warner Futura, UK, pb. Hardcover editions: Little Brown, UK, 1994; St. Martin’s Press, US, 1995, as An Easy Day for a Lady.

   Over her career Gillian Linscott’s sizable list of mystery fiction has featured two different series characters. Nell Bray, who is in this one, first appeared in print in Sister Beneath the Sheet, which was published in 1991. Timewise, that book took place in 1909, or very early on in her life as a militant London-based suffragette. Her adventures have appeared more or less chronologically ever since, except for the last two, at least one of which has jumped back in time to her earlier, more formative years.

   In Linscott’s first four books, the detective of record was Birdie Linnet, a divorced former policeman trying to maintain contact with his daughter. Not having read any of them, I know little more than that. Nor I have come across any reason why Linscott abandoned him as a character, though the most likely one, of course, is that it happened at the publisher’s wishes, not hers. There are also three non-series books in her bibliography, which I’ve expanded below from the one found in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV:

   Many of these have been published in the US by St. Martin’s, so Linscott is far from an unknown author on this side of the Atlantic. On the other hand, none of them have been published over here in a mass market paperback edition, so I could easily be wrong about how recognizable her byline might really be.

   There are several websites devoted to her and her fiction, but none of them seems to answer the question whether or not she is still writing. If you know more, you might pass the word along to me.

   The primary factor in knowing Nell Bray as a character is her passionate devotion to the Right of Women to Vote, ironically making the one book of hers that I have happened to read, Widow’s Peak, perhaps the least typical in the series. Nell is on vacation in France from her brick-throwing proclivities in this one – in Chamonix, to be exact, at the foot of Mont Blanc, where very early on in the book a dead man is found in the ice, having known to have been killed in an “accident” which occurred thirty years earlier. The only early feminist items on the agenda are subtle, and they appear only in context, but (strangely enough) they manage to be all the more noticeable when they do.

   You will, of course, have noticed that I placed the word “accident” in quotes. Any self-respecting mystery reader will know immediately that there no accident is involved, and there never had been. Nell, who is also a skilled translator by profession, is hired by the dead man’s brother and his family to help facilitate their taking the dead man’s body back to England. This gives her an immediate, insider’s view of their various activities – which I’ve deliberately phrased this way, since for a good portion of the book, there is no investigation into a murder, per se.

   But the dead man’s journal, found in the ice near his body, contains several entries with sobering implications, and soon enough Nell finds herself in the thick of things, as seems to be the usual case for her. As a historical novel, Widow’s Peak is quite delightful, picturing as it does the Bohemian way of life in the village in some detail, not to mention (if you take a good look at the cover) sharp images of pre-war hiking expeditions up the mountain. Both men and women were in these co-educational parties, as if they were on larks of some magnitude, which indeed they were.

   While keeping me up far past my bedtime, the detective story unfortunately concludes in more post-Victorian melodrama than I’d have preferred. The twists and turns of the plot along the way, however – some foreseeable, others thankfully not – certainly made up for it in spades (and ropes and axes and all other shapes and forms of primitive mountaineering equipment).

PostScript: For an excellent overview of other mysteries taking place in the days of women’s rights movements, check out this recent post in Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist.

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN – Mr Polton Explains

Hodder & Stoughton, UK, 1940. Dodd Mead, US, 1940. Popular Library #70, pb, 1946.

   We’ve probably all played “what if,” going further and further back in our lives to establish the chain of circumstances which led to playing the very game itself, and in this case to your reading this review.

   Mr Polton Speaks, written in two parts, begins in this fashion. Nathaniel Polton, orphaned as a toddler, relates the various stages of his somewhat Dickensian life up to his making Dr Thorndyke’s acquaintance, the circumstances of which explain his devotion to the good doctor. He also tells how he learnt certain skills, some of which will be very useful to his employer when he becomes servant/assistant to Dr Thorndyke.

   Much detail is given about Mr Polton’s interest in a particular profession and a specific invention of his which, years later, provides a vital clue to unraveling a mysterious death, the circumstances of which form the second part of the book, narrated by Dr Jervis. To my surprise Mr Polton actually states which particular knowledge contributed to the solution of the crime, though this revelation was not really needed because between autobiographical comments and the description of the scene of the crime it is obvious how the murder was accomplished, if not the person responsible.

   In brief, a fire completely guts a house where Mr Haire has taken rooms. Fortunately for him, he was in Ireland at the time, but unfortunately his cousin, Cecil Moxdale, was staying in the flat. The building is completely burnt out and the body is found more or less charred out of recognition although items found in the debris establish its identity.

   And yet … certain aspects of the death suggest it was not accidental or even suicide and so Thorndyke and Jervis become involved. Although the resolution hinges on a whacking great coincidence which stretches the long arm of coincidence so much it’s amazing it didn’t fall off, on rereading Mr Polton’s section I found circumstances described there (in a more subtle manner than the statement mentioned above) do in fact provide a fair clue or two to the alert reader.

   My verdict:  Alas, this is the most disappointing of this author’s works read so far. In fact, it gives the distinct impression Mr Polton’s autobiography was grafted onto a short story to form a novel. The necessary information could, I believe, have been provided within the section penned by Dr Jervis easily enough and in a far less obvious manner. Shocking to relate, I found Mr Polton’s life story more interesting than the mystery and its resolution, though the latter did have an unexpected twist.

   E-text link: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500371.txt

EDGAR WALLACE – The Clue of the Twisted Candle

George Newnes, London, hc, 1917. Small Maynard & Co.,Boston, hc, 1916. Numerous reprints in both hardcover and paperback. TV Film: An episode of The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre, 15 August 1960, with Bernard Lee as “Superintendent Meredith.”

   Assistant Commissioner of Police T. X. Meredith, a man of unorthodox though successful methods of detection and best friend of mystery writer John Lexman, has been investigating Remington Kara, an extremely rich Greek with something of a turbulent history and a former suitor for the hand of Lexman’s wife.

   Kara was almost murdered years ago, and such is his fear of another attempt being made his bedroom is “practically a safe.” It features burglar-proof walls, reinforced concrete roof and floor, an unreachable window, and its sole door has in addition to a lock “a sort of steel latch which he lets down when he retires for the night and which he opens himself personally in the morning”.

   Of course Kara is eventually found dead, locked in this safe-like room. How was Kara’s murder accomplished, why did his secretary disappear and his manservant run away, and for that matter who killed the dog in the basement of his house? Was Kara killed by the men he has feared for years or someone else, and if so, who was it and why?

   Answers to these conundrums are revealed at a gathering at the end of the book in which All Is Explained, including how the challenge presented by the locked room was overcome.

   My verdict: On the negative side I felt there were perhaps one too many coincidences and the identity of the murderer was not as well hidden as it might have been. On the other hand, the locked room explanation is ingenious, clues to how it was accomplished are revealed in a fair fashion in the narrative, and I confess I did not foresee one of the final twists. I would sum it up as a diverting, light read.

   Etext available online.

FLY AWAY GIRL. Warner Brothers, 1937. Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Gordon Oliver, Hugh O’Connell, Tom Kennedy.

   It must have been Glenda Farrell Day sometime last year at Turner Classic Movies, or at a minimum, Torchy Blane Day, since I’ve just discovered that I taped a complete sequence of the Torchy films that day, all eight of them. I watched a few of them last year, decided I didn’t want to overdose on them, put them aside – and promptly forgot about them until a couple of days ago when I came across them again.

   This one’s number two in the series, in case you’re counting. I can’t exactly tell you what the appeal is with these movies, since the mystery plots are kind of sappy and so are the characters, to tell you the truth. It’s been a while since I watched the first one, Smart Blonde (1937), so I’d rather you didn’t quote me on this, but I have the feeling that the detective element was the strongest in that one, before the comedy became more and more significant. Since it’s also the only one that was based on a Frederick Nebel pulp fiction story, I think I’m safe enough in saying so.

   Torchy Blane is an ace newspaper reporter, and she must have been quite a model for plenty of young girls in the late 30s and early 40s, because she is an ace, female or not. Her boy friend (or fiancé, more or less) is Lt. Steve McBride (Barton MacLane), who has an ordinary mind for police work and who (therefore) is no match for Torchy. You might consider him lunk-headed, but I think that is why Tom Kennedy is in these movies, as Sgt. Orville Gahagan, a poor poetry-spouting sap who lives for nothing more to use the siren whenever he’s whisking McBride off to the next scene of the crime. Gahagan makes McBride look positively Holmesian in comparison.

   The plot in this particular episode in their lives centers around the murder of diamond merchant in his office, but Torchy’s choice for the killer, a reporter with a rich father, seems to have an iron-clad alibi. When her candidate for a killer takes an around-the-world tour as a newspaper stunt, Torchy talks her editor into allowing her to tag along, hence the title.

   Actually, I do know what the appeal is for these movies. It’s Torchy herself, or rather Glenda Farrell who plays her: fast-talking and fast-thinking, brassy without being bold, funny and wisecracking, but her mind on only one thing, her story. The photo of her that you see above didn’t come from this movie. I couldn’t find any, I’m sorry to say, but I thought this publicity still would do fairly well in its place.

KENDALL FOSTER CROSSEN – The Tortured Path

Permabook M4099; paperback reprint, June 1958. Hardcover edition: E. P. Dutton, June 1957. One chapter appeared earlier in Stag Magazine under the title “The Treatment.” Later paperback edition: Paperback Library 64-706, 1971, as by “M. E. Chaber writing as Kendall Foster Crossen.”

   That last byline is rather strange, if you think about it. Kendall Foster Crossen was the author’s real name, and M. E. Chaber was the name he used to write his “Milo March” novels. Paperback Library had been publishing these in uniform editions, all with hugely attractive covers by Robert McGinnis. They must have done well with them, because they when they ran out of Milo March’s adventures to print, to capitalize on Chaber’s popularity, they started doing some of Crossen’s other work in the same numbered format, including this one and several he wrote as by Christopher Monig.

   Milo March was basically an insurance investigator, but he also had connections with the CIA, and his adventures took him all over the world. [For more on March, check out his page on the Thrilling Detective website.]

   Major Kim Locke, the primary protagonist in The Tortured Path, had even more direct connections with the CIA, and I’ll go into the details in a minute. First, though, here’s a list of the books he appeared in, taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

   Why the switch in bylines, I don’t know, but it may have had something to do with the switch in publishers. The Big Dive is scarce; it was never reprinted in paperback, and at the moment, there are only two copies of the hardcover edition offered for sale on the Internet. While The Gentle Assassin never had a paperback edition either, it is fairly common in hardcover. It’s also easily available in a three-in-one Detective Book Club edition.

   Here are the first couple of paragraphs from The Tortured Path, which will give you more information about Major Locke’s background. It will also supply you with a glimpse of the author’s writing style, or so it’s my intention:

   His assignment? To get himself caught by the Chinese Communists, be brainwashed and undergo any other form of torture they might devise for him, and then rescue an American officer who has secrets that mustn’t fall into enemy hands.

   Which he does. End of book. Well, not quite, but almost. Getting in is far too easy, getting out is another matter, sort of the scorched-earth approach, if you ask me, crude but effective. Crossen has a quiet, breezy style of story-telling, beginning (as you will have seen) with page one onward. The resulting adventure is readable in about a night or two. It is also largely forgettable in about the same length of time.

ON THE ISLE OF SAMOA. Columbia, 1950. Jon Hall, Susan Cabot, Raymond Greenleaf, Al Kikume. Directed by William A. Berke.

   Jon Hall made a career out of making movies (and television shows) taking place in jungles, deserts, and South Seas islands, and obviously this is one of them. Checking out his biography on IMDB, among other items of interest I learned that he was of Swiss/Tahitian descent, and that his mother was a Tahitian princess, and I believe that explains a lot.

   And which makes a movie like this one right up his alley, except that as a B-movie it rated a sub-B budget and (as the old saying goes) it probably escaped rather than being released. Hall is also a villain, which is hard to take, given that I remember him most as the star (and hero) of Ramar of the Jungle on TV, episodes of which I believe are available on DVD. I’ve hesitated in picking them up, however, as I’ve been disappointed before in watching what was wonderful when I was ten or twelve and might not be quite so wonderful today.

   As badly-tempered Kenneth Crandall in this short film, barely over 60 minutes long, he flees the successful burglary of a nightclub in Australia in a stolen plane, only to crash on an uncharted island during a hurricane (which was more likely a typhoon, if anyone had taken the time to check). The island is inhabited by beautiful women, strong men and one aged missionary (Raymond Greenleaf), who does his best to convince Crandall to renounce his evil ways. But even with the beautifully vacuous Moana (Susan Clarke) as a love interest, Crandall stays remarkably thuggish and unpersuaded.

   The only suspense in this film is how long he will resist. To avoid giving away the ending, let me suggest to you that he may never see the error of his ways, and he dies before his heart (and mind) ever softens at all.

STAR IN THE DUST. Universal, 1956. John Agar, Mamie Van Doren, Richard Boone, Leif Erickson, Colleen Gray, James Gleason, Terry Gilkyson, Harry Morgan. Based on the novel Law Man (Ballantine #51, 1953) by Lee Leighton (Wayne Overholser). Directed by Charles F. Haas.

   A “B” western, perhaps, but it packs a lot of drama into its 80 minutes. Folksinger Terry Gilkyson, soloing on his guitar, frames the story from time to time, the tale of a bad man named Sam Hall (Richard Boone), who is to be hanged at sundown at the end of the single day in which the this film takes place.

   But why is a review of a western movie here in the first place, on a website dedicated to crime and mystery fiction, you may ask. And I reply, in almost every western, whether in print or on film, there is a crime, and as a bonus, there is often a crime to be solved.

   The mystery in this case is, who hired Sam Hall to kill three farmers who (the ranchers say) crossed over the creek into their lands? The sheriff (John Agar), who’s been staying neutral and keeping the peace, has his own battles to fight, trying to live up to his father’s reputation on the job, for one, and salvaging his wedding to the sister (Mamie Van Doren) of the banker (Leif Erikson) who’s the head of the cattleman’s association (see below).

   And (as fate would have it) this would-be brother-in-law is his leading suspect as well. It’s a tough job, but Sheriff Jorden seems up to it. You might think that Mamie Van Doren would be out of place in a western drama, but I certainly didn’t mind. It also seems to me that throughout his career James Gleason always played skinny old men, and at the age of 74, when he made this one, he’d finally grown into the part. Richard Boone may have made a better western villain than he did a western hero (Paladin), and even if you may not agree, he’s at his best (that is to say, his nastiest) in this one.

   There are a few twists and turns in the tale, more than I expected, but as far as the identity of the man who hired the killer is concerned, unfortunately there is no twist at all. There’s plenty of full color action, though, for those who look for that in their westerns, including one sprawling fight between two ladies who are no ladies at the time at all, neither of whom is played by Mamie Van Doren, who is always very definitely a lady.

BRIAN FLYNN – The Sharp Quillet. John Long, hardcover, no date stated (1947). No US edition.

   You’ll have to fasten your seatbelts, because I’m going to begin this review with a list of Brian Flynn’s mysteries, and it’s going to be a long one. Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, these are the British titles only. Most of these were published only in England, but those preceded by (**) did have US editions.

   The detective in every one of these works of crime fiction is a chap named Anthony Bathurst, and since he’s in the book at hand, there will be more about him in a minute. At the present time, there’s no year of death given for his author, Brian Flynn, and I’ll ask a couple of people what they might know about that. First, though, the list of titles:

FLYNN, BRIAN (1885- ) An accountant in government service, a lecturer in Elocution and Speech, an amateur actor.

** The Billiard-Room Mystery (n.) Hamilton 1927.
** The Case of the Black Twenty-Two (n.) Hamilton 1928.
** The Mystery of the Peacock’s Eye (n.) Hamilton 1928.
** The Five Red Fingers (n.) Long 1929.
* Invisible Death (n.) Hamilton 1929.
** The Murders Near Mapleton (n.) Hamilton 1929.
** The Creeping Jenny Mystery (n.) Long 1930.
** Murder En Route (n.) Long 1930.
* The Orange Axe (n.) Long 1931.
* The Triple Bite (n.) Long 1931.
* The Edge of Terror (n.) Long 1932.
* The Padded Door (n.) Long 1932.
* The Spiked Lion (n.) Long 1933.
** The Case of the Purple Calf (n.) Long 1934.
* The Horn (n.) Long 1934.
* The League of Matthias (n.) Long 1934.
* Tragedy at Trinket (n.) Nelson 1934.
* The Sussex Cuckoo (n.) Long 1935.
** Fear and Trembling (n.) Long 1936.
* The Fortescue Candle (n.) Long 1936.
** Tread Softly (n.) Long 1937.
* Cold Evil (n.) Long 1938.
* The Ebony Stag (n.) Long 1938.
** Black Edged (n.) Long 1939.
* The Case of the Faithful Heart (n.) Long 1939.
* The Case of the Painted Ladies (n.) Long 1940.
* They Never Came Back (n.) Long 1940.
* Such Bright Disguises (n.) Long 1941.
* Glittering Prizes (n.) Long 1942.
* Reverse the Charges (n.) Long 1943.
* The Grim Maiden (n.) Long 1944.
* The Case of Elymas the Sorcerer (n.) Long 1945.
* Conspiracy at Angel (n.) Long 1947.
* Exit Sir John (n.) Long 1947.

* The Sharp Quillet (n.) Long 1947.
* The Swinging Death (n.) Long 1948.
* Men for Pieces (n.) Long 1949.
* Black Agent (n.) Long 1950.
* And Cauldron Bubble (n.) Long 1951.
* Where There Was Smoke (n.) Long 1951.
* The Ring of Innocent (n.) Long 1952.
* The Running Nun (n.) Long 1952.
* The Seventh Sign (n.) Long 1952.
* Out of the Dusk (n.) Long 1953.
* The Doll’s Done Dancing (n.) Long 1954.
* The Feet of Death (n.) Long 1954.
* The Mirador Collection (n.) Long 1955.
* The Shaking Spear (n.) Long 1955.
* The Dice Are Dark (n.) Long 1956.
* The Toy Lamb (n.) Long 1956.
* The Hands of Justice (n.) Long 1957.
* The Wife Who Disappeared (n.) Long 1957.
* The Nine Cuts (n.) Long 1958.
* The Saints Are Sinister (n.) Long 1958.

   It certainly isn’t likely to mean anything, but Mr. Flynn didn’t do anything like slow down toward the end of his writing career, did he? Sixteen books between 1951 and 1958, after reaching the age of 66. One might guess that he’d retired from his day job (see above).

   Heading off to see what Google says, with the author having such a common name, it was quickly discovered that any kind of effective search was going to have to be done on Bathurst the character, rather than Brian Flynn the author. And — there’s nothing to be found. All that comes up are books by Flynn for sale from various dealers’ catalogues. Other than what Al Hubin has provided for him in his entry in CFIV, there’s not a single website providing information on either author or character to be found, not one citation, nothing. (That’s about to change, however, isn’t it?)

   Obviously Brian Flynn was no rival to Agatha Christie, but why has he so drastically dropped out of sight? Were his books so indifferently or badly written? On the basis of one example, I’d say no, but on the basis of the very same example, I’d have to agree (if asked) that the style of story is outdated, or at least its ending is. The detective work is essentially sound, although the reader is not made privy to all that Anthony Bathurst knows.

   And I see that I’m writing this review wrong end to, and so to right this wrong, let me jump back to the prologue, in which a defendant in court is sentenced to die (and does), but so does the entire jury, all twelve individuals, wiped out in a rocket bomb attack and preceding the defendant to death. I don’t think I’ve ever read that in a book before!

   At some length of time later, more deaths begin occurring, the first being that of Nicholas Flagon, a justice on the panel that denied the appeal of the defendant in the prologue. Which is why I so strongly dislike prologues, if I may bring this small rant out into the open one more time. I hate knowing facts and information that the detectives on the case do not have. I don’t enjoy it, I don’t like watching bright policeman and even brighter private detectives work their way through investigations on a case that doesn’t really begin (for me) until they’ve caught up to where I already am, due to the wisdom imparted to me when I didn’t really want it.

   End of rant. Dr. Harradine and the local Inspector, a man named Catchpole, are the first on the scene. Tied around the shaft of the dart that has just killed its victim is a slip of paper that says, “A nice sharp quillet. Ay!”

   Off to the dictionary go I, and wouldn’t you? A quillet is not a small pen, as suggested on page 30, but: “An evasion. In French ‘pleadings’ each separate allegation in the plaintiff’s charge, and every distinct plea in the defendant’s answer used to begin with qu’il est; whence our quillet, to signify a false charge, or an evasive answer.” Emphasis on “a false charge.”

   The policemen on the case, and Anthony Bathurst, do not get back to this point until page 111, so OK, I did some investigating on my own and learned something before they did. I’m not contradicting myself, in terms of what I said about prologues just moments before. I think that this is acceptable, isn’t it?

   As for Anthony Lotherington Bathurst, he enters the scene on page 50, when he’s asked by Commissioner Kemble of Scotland Yard to add his expertise to the men on the ground (so to speak) where the victim was killed, their efforts seemingly going nowhere. Bathurst agrees — there’s nothing like a good solid case of mystery to work on — and together with Chief Detective-Inspector MacMorran he makes his way to the otherwise sleepy village of Quiddington St. Phillip, just in time for another death to have occurred.

   From this you may thinking that Bathurst is just another policeman highly regarded for solving crimes, but he is not. He’s a private detective. PI’s in the US have seldom had this kind of respect for their abilities as those who plied their trade in England. Perhaps Bathurst should be called a private inquiry agent, along the lines of a Sherlock Holmes. The name of the profession makes all of the difference in the world.

   By page 113 Bathurst has decided that he knows who the killer is, but (of course) he has no proof. On page 174 he explains, but he fudges a little, in my opinion, for back on page 113, as he relates it later, all he had were the same four suspects that the reader had, with only a high probability as to which of the four it was likely to be.

   Coming in between is a matter of filling in of the details, plus a long stretch of about 25 pages’ worth of unadulterated thriller-like behavior in which the next projected victim of the killer must be protected and the reader (literally) comes along only for the ride. Which is to say that if the reader were kept informed of what is happening, he (or she) would also know who it was the victim is being protected against.

   If that makes any sense at all. In any case, everything works out fine, and handshakes all around are the order of day. While Flynn was no rival to Christie or any of the other names you’re a lot more familiar with, in my opinion neither does he deserve to be forgotten. There are some scenes in this book, well-described, that will linger in memory for a while, including the prologue, and yes, I’d read another adventure of Mr. Bathurst at any place and time that you say, other than the break of dawn.

PATRICIA SPRINKLE – Death on a Family Tree

Avon, paperback original; 1st printing, January 2007.

   Here’s an author who’s been writing mysteries for quite a while, and (this may come as no surprise) this is the first one of hers that I’ve read. From the author’s website and a few other sources, including Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, I’ve come up with what I believe is a list of the books she’s done. Note that in some cases her byline is Patricia Houck Sprinkle.

Sheila Travis Series: In Murder at Markham Sheila has been recently widowed and is working for a diplomatic training center in Chicago. Assisting her in solving crimes is her Aunt Mary, who hails from Atlanta, where Sheila frequently goes back to visit. In the third book in the series, Sheila moves back there permanently.

MacLaren Yarbrough Series: In the first book in the series, MacLaren is a wife of Judge Joe Riddley Yarbrough, a magistrate for the state of Georgia. In the second book, after her husband is shot, and two other people are murdered, MacLaren not only solves the crimes, but she takes over his position on the bench as well. After the first two novels were published by a Christian press, the rest of the series were published as mass-market paperback originals.

The Family Tree Series:

   From Ms. Sprinkle’s website she says about her work in progress: “Now I am deep in the tenth, and probably last, MacLaren Yarbrough mystery, What Are You Wearing To Die?” Which strongly suggests, of course, that she’s in the midst of shifting gears. Future mystery adventures will be concentrating Katharine Murray, a middle-aged Atlanta housewife who’s well-off and somewhat pampered, and whose first brush with crime in any form Death on the Family Tree is.

   The book begins on her 46th birthday, which she’s spending alone and which, unbeknownst to her, is her last day in her old comfortable life. Her children have moved out, and her husband Tom is out of town. Opening a box left to her by her recently departed Aunt Lucy, she finds two unusual items in among the junk: an ugly bronze necklace dating from the mid-1800s from Halstatt, Austria, and a diary, written in German and dating from a far more recent 1937.

   As she begins some genealogical researching she soon discovers relatives that she never knew she had, that there are secrets in her family she had never been told about, and that the diary means something to someone who will stop at nothing to possess it. You may have guessed that about the latter.

   Also re-entering her life is a former boy friend, one she’d unceremoniously dumped before she married Tom, who is blissfully unaware that his absence in this crucially important time is his wife’s life is as serious as it is. Make that totally oblivious. (Speaking from a man’s point of view, he is a blithering idiot, and if he doesn’t watch out, he will deserve what he will most certainly get in the next book in the series.)

   Forgive me. I had to get that out of my system. It takes a while for all of Katharine’s family, her friends, and her friends’ families straightened out in the reader’s mind, and there surely are a lot of them, family, friends and relatives, that is. Katharine herself is prone to talking too much to all of them about her finds, and almost everyone else she meets. This was a tendency that this reader found almost intolerable, especially when all of this excessive talking leads to her being chased by cars, break-ins at her home, and eventually worse: several murders.

   It is soon clear (or it was to this reader) who is responsible for all of this nefarious activity, but Katharine, who even toward the end of the book still has not learned much about this Brand New World she is in, walks straight into the hands of the enemy, as if without a thought in her head.

   I don’t usually start yelling at characters in the mystery fiction I am reading, but I did this time. Perhaps that means that I cared? Perhaps so.