Fri 3 Jul 2009
MIGNON G. EBERHART – Woman on the Roof.
Paperback reprint: Popular Library; several printings, including 1968, 1973. Hardcover editions: Random House, US, 1967; Collins Crime Club, UK, 1968. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, January 1968.
Mignon Eberhart’s started out by writing detective stories, more or less. Her first five books, starting with The Patient in Room 18 in 1929, featured the mystery-solving duo of nurse Sarah Keate and private eye Lance O’Leary, and they were highly regarded enough that all five were made into movies.
Allow me to digress, if you will. I did some investigation, and here’s a complete list of all the films that have been based on Eberhart novels. I’ve underlined the ones mentioned above as being the first five Keate and O’Leary books.
? The White Cockatoo, 1935; Jean Muir & Ricardo Cortez (no series characters).
? Murder by an Aristocrat, 1936; Marguerite Churchill & Lyle Talbot (the former as Sally Keating, but no Lance O’Leary).
? The Murder of Dr. Harrigan, 1936; Kay Linaker & Ricardo Cortez (the former as Sally Keating, but no Lance O’Leary; based on From This Dark Stairway).
? The Great Hospital Mystery, 1937; Sally Blane, Thomas Beck, Jane Darwell (the latter as Miss Keats, with no Lance O’Leary; based on an unidentified story).
? The Dark Stairway, 1938. (British movie also based on From This Dark Stairway, but with neither Sarah Keate or Lance O’Leary).
? Mystery House, 1938; Ann Sheridan & Dick Purcell (Keate & O’Leary; based on The Mystery of Hunting’s End).
? The Patient in Room 18, 1938; Ann Sheridan & Patric Knowles (Keate & O’Leary).
? Three’s a Crowd, 1945; Pamela Blake & Charles Gordon (no series characters; based on Hasty Wedding).
There was one book in which only Sarah Keate appeared and which did not become a movie, and that was Wolf in Man’s Clothing, which was published in 1942.
Over the years I may have seen one or two others in this list, but the only one I remember watching is The Patient in Room 18. And you can, in fact, read my review of this it here, posted earlier on this blog. I enjoyed it, but it was in spite of all of the movie’s flaws, including being played primarily for laughs.
Eberhart’s final mystery was Three Days for Emeralds, which came out in 1988, when the author was in her late 80’s. She died in 1996, with well over 50 novels to her credit.
From the book at hand, however, try the following first line on for size: “There were times when the shadow on the terrace seemed to take on the shape of a woman’s body flung down, left in its blood and beauty.”
It’s a pretty good indication, I think, of the kind of book you’re going to get when you read it. As it happens, the first wife of Susan Desart’s new husband had been murdered on that very same penthouse terrace five winters and four summers earlier. Ssusan had married Marcus when the Jim, the man she really loved — and still mourns for — died in Viet Nam.
And other than that one single reference, this is a book that could have just as easily have been written in the 1940s. It’s an old-fashioned mystery story in which the staging creaks once in a while, but when Jim turns up not dead after all, and Marcus refuses any discussion of a divorce, revealing his true nature in surprisingly violent fashion, old-fashioned chills started to creep up and down this still rather modern spine of mine.
In her later years Eberhart wrote what’s probably best described as romantic suspense, perhaps, but this is no cozy. There’s some real emotion involved in this book. I’d cast Edward G. Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck in two of the parts, and maybe John Payne as the other.
But why it was never made into a movie, nor any other of Mignon Eberhart’s books after 1945, I can’t tell you. Woman on the Roof came along too late, but if her 1940s and 50s books are as good as this one is — and I think they are — then I’d have thought that they’d have fit right in with the Film Noir era.
At the least, based on what Hollywood did to The Patient in Room 18, they would turned out better than the movies based on her early detective fiction. If ever an opportunity was missed, this was it.
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:15 pm
This is a terrific article.
“Woman on the Roof” is one of the many Eberhart’s I haven’t read. Have read very few of the post-1945 ones. It sounds interesting.
The Sarah Keate novels tend to be genuine detective stories. Some of them are full of atmosphere. Especially in their opening chapters, which set up their backgrounds – usually in some spooky building, often at night.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Another vote for Eberhart here. She did romantic suspense as well as it can be done, and many of her books have real atmosphere and style. 1946 Five Passengers to Lisbon is one that stands out in my memory.
Eberhart was also a regular contributor to American Magazine,along with Philip Wylie and Kelly Roos.
They weren’t all equal, but I don’t think I ever read a bad Eberhart, which is a fair recommendation for a writer that prolific.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
While Mignon Eberhart was still alive — she died in 1996 at the age of 96 or 97 — her books were very popular. It was still possible to sell paperbacks by mail then, and any duplicates I had simply flew out the door.
But I suspect that her name no longer means anything to the latest generation of mystery readers — which is not the first time that this lament has come up in the comments following a review of a vintage mystery, but in Eberhart’s case, I’ll make an exception and do so again.
Why isn’t it possible to sell paperbacks by mail any more? Large supply, dwindling demand. The Internet came along, and most “mass market” books can be purchased on Amazon for a penny, plus shipping.
That’s not quite true for older books, but to back up my statement a little, I just looked on Amazon and found four copies of a paperback edition of WOMAN ON THE ROOF in Good to Very Good condition for $2.49 or less.
After Amazon takes their 15% cut, with prices in this range, it simply doesn’t pay to list books there. It’s great for buyers, if you’re looking, but not for sellers.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
And, just in case you’re interested, the Amazon.com Sales Rank for WOMAN ON THE ROOF is #3,918,313.
Which is not as terrible as it sounds. I’ve seen books with sales rankings in the seven millions. Maybe Eberhart IS holding her own!
— Steve
July 4th, 2009 at 8:38 am
In comment #3 Steve brings up the question of why is it not possible to sell paperbacks by mail anymore. As he says the internet came along. And it’s just not hard by mail either. I’ve been at conventions and found very little interest in vintage paperbacks. An example of what I mean concerns the Hammett paperback series published by Bestseller, Jonathan Press, Mercury Press. There are around 13 short story collections in the series and before the internet they used to bring fairly high prices and be in demand. However ebay and the internet proved that the reality was very different. They are not that rare and the prices dropped to very low levels.
The same proved true of most vintage paperbacks with a few exceptions like Jim Thompson and JUNKIE. I recently tried to sell a few hundred vintage PBs at a couple conventions and Steve and I could not help noticing that there was very little interest even at prices below $5.00 each.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
[…] which point the two books diverge, this one and Woman on the Roof, by Mignon G. Eberbart, reviewed here earlier on this blog, but the similarity was simply amazing. In The Dark River, the wife gradually […]
May 30th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
I adore Mignon Eberhart, and had I known she was still alive in 1996, I would have done anything to meet her. I first started reading her in my 30’s and now in my 50’s she is my favorite author. I have several copies of most of her books, because they are from used book stores and wear out quickly. But, I save every one. Her writing style is unique and her mysteries riveting. I’m a nurse and the Nurse Keate stories are my very favorite.