WILL CREED – Death Comes Grinning. Five Star Mystery #47, digest-sized paperback original; 1st printing, 1946.

         Oh, Pittsburgh’s the home of the steel mill,
         The home of the rail and the rod;
         Where the Cooks speak only to Bodemans
         And the Bodemans speak only to God.

   Yes, I know you’ve heard it with different names, but never mind. Sally Brown, recently graduated nurse, is hired to care for the relict of Cyrus Bodeman, who spoke, it would seem, more with Satan than God.

   Brown is chosen because of her name, which implies to some person or persons unnamed, for reason or reasons unspecified, and in this case downright erroneously, plainness in appearance.

   Why this is important the author sayeth not.

   Bodeman’s widow is no prize, either, nor are her three sons. An unpleasant family, an unpleasant house, and Mrs. Bodeman has $100,000 in cash hidden away. She knows someone is trying to kill her for the money and the inheritance, so she gives Brown the key to the money box and names her in her will to get whatever else there is except the house.

   Mrs. Bodeman likes Brown. It’s a good thing she didn’t hate her.

   After the housekeeper dies suspiciously, Brown investigates. This requires her tasting a substance that could be strychnine and fortunately isn’t. She later, again voluntarily, drinks from a glass with a substance that could be strychnine and is. Two glasses of water drunk in quick succession, the popular and seemingly efficacious antidote to strychnine poisoning, save her for further folly.

   This is primarily a suspense novel, as you will have noted, and not a very good one, as I will note for you.

   Nobody gets the house or the money; Brown gets and deserves one of the Bodeman boys.

Editorial Comments: Will Creed was the pen name of author William Long. He wrote one other mystery novel under this name, that being Death Wears a Green Hat, which I reviewed here. I also appear to have liked the book I read more than Bill seems to have liked his.

   As Peter Yates, Long wrote another four detective novels, all published by either Five Star Mystery or the closely related Vulcan line. (A full bibliography accompanies that earlier review.)