Sun 5 Jun 2011
AARON MARC STEIN – The Rolling Heads. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1979. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, July 1979.
It shouldn’t be revealing too much to say that the heads mentioned in the title are really of cabbages, but what they’re doing blocking a French highway will be left to stay part of the mystery.
Matt Erridge, by occupation an engineer, finds a girl he’s delighted to take with him on a tour of French castles, but as it happens, she has a jealous boy friend, and the latter has kidnapping, if not murder, on his mind.
Erridge knows his way around all parts of the world, and his adventures continue to keep Stein, his chronicler, busy at the typewriter. Even though a great deal of puzzled detective work takes place, this is still essentially an action story. No actual detection required.
Rating: B minus.
[UPDATE] 06-05-11. Besides being very prolific under his own name, Aaron Marc Stein also wrote many mysteries both as both George Bagby and Hampton Stone. Under any of the three names, he’s always been one of my favorite authors. If you use the search box somewhere here on the right, you’ll find many of his books already reviewed on this blog.
I wish this particular review weren’t so short, but I was relatively new at the Courant at the time, and shorter reviews were all they wanted from me. Too bad. This review, well under 200 words, doesn’t remind me a whole lot about the book, just enough to make me want to read it again, the next time it surfaces.
June 5th, 2011 at 6:50 am
I’ve never read one of the “Stein” books, though I have read some as by Stone and Bagby. I know Ellen Nehr was a big fan of his earlier series about Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt.
June 5th, 2011 at 11:35 am
I’ve always supposed that the reason Stein used different pen names was that he didn’t want to overburden the book-buying public (including libraries) by too many books out by one author at one time.
If you like his writing style, you’ll like any of his books. But if it’s only certain characters that interest you, as Ellen did with the Mulligan-Hunt books, then you can more easily narrow his output down.
I don’t remember if she liked Stein-Bagby-Stone other than the ones Mulligan and Hunt were in. She was especially fond of books with Little Old Ladies in them, which eventually expanded to Little Old Gentlemen.
June 5th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
Inspired by the comments here at MYSTERY*FILE, read books by this author last fall for the first time.
Very much enjoyed the four Bagbys.
Was less interested in the Stone.
Will be reading more in the future!