RUTH FENISONG – The Butler Died in Brooklyn.Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover 1943. Mystery Novel Classic #97, digest-sized paperback, 1946/47. Stark House Press, 2-in-1 edition with Murder Runs a Fever, softcover, 2024.

   Fenisong wrote thirteen books about New York Police Sergeant (later Inspector) Gridley Nelson from 1942 to 1960. They enjoyed considerable popularity and many were reprinted in paperback. In an era of uneducated but street wise fictional cops, Nelson has just about everything going for him. He is a Princeton graduate with a substantial private income that allows him to hire a full-time housekeeper who lives in Harlem and serves as an information pipeline through her friendships with other servants. This is of enormous value to Nelson since he is frequently assigned to investigate upper-class murders.

   In The Butler Died in Brooklyn, tangled upper-class family relationships arc involved when Beulah Fitch Casey Danille Roberts’s longtime butler, Shepard (who had just been fired without cause), is found murdered. “Booming Beulah” has just moved her entire household — including giddy granddaughter Marianne and her twin brothers — from Gramercy Park to a recently converted apartment house to be near her current husband’s antique shop/warehouse.

   After another family murder, Nelson’s housekeeper, Sammy, takes it upon herself to answer an ad for a maid in the household. Proper police procedure is followed, with long interrogation of suspects and extensive background checks, while Marianne complicates matters by trying to protect her brothers and getting herself kidnapped. It is the dogged, step-by-step investigation by Nelson, and Sammy behind the scenes, that finally solves the case just in time to prevent another murder.

   Fenisong’s books, even the non-series ones like Jenny Kissed Me ( l944), are a mixture of romance and suspense, and provide glimpses of how the other half lives. Her formula of the wealthy young police officer who “speaks the language” has been used by others, but never more successfully. Among Gridley Nelson’s other successful cases are Murder Needs a Face (1942), Deadlock (1952), and Dead Weight (1962).

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   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.

HARRY HARRISON – Deathworld 3. Dell #1849, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1968. Cover art: John Berkey. Ace, paperback, 1987. Serialized earlier in Analog SF, Feb-Mar-Apr 1968, as The Horse Barbarians.

   Jason dinAlt convinces some of the inhabitants of the planet Pyrrus (Deathworld 27) to attempt resettling on Felicity. Rich mineral deposits await them, but the native barbarians make the new planet only slightly less unfriendly to new off-world settlers. Their culture is that of warring tribesmen, cities are [restricted] by traditional laws, and death by following the law is [definitely an] obstacle.

   The Pyrrans attempt infiltration of the most powerful clan, led by Temuchin, but they discover that cultural change can come only from within, and that defeat can lead to final victory.

   Too much of the story is spent on the wrong approach, which would be acceptable if bloodshed were an approved form of entertainment. [Worse], Jason has on page 21 a computer capable of providing the necessary conclusions, and it is not until page 167 that it even appears in the story again. The emphasis on fighting and violence is not justified, […] with the latter breaking out over and over again.

Rating: ***