GEORGE CHILDERNESS – Murder in False Face.

Phoenix Press, hardcover, 1943. Hangman’s House Mystery #3, digest-sized paperback, “condensed slightly,” 1946. News Stand Library #125, pb; 1950.

   Chet Phelps, assistant to Mr. Kent, first name undisclosed but publisher of twenty-odd newspapers, has some unusual duties. Preventing his boss from starving himself in the name of economy is foremost, but he also does some “stenography, reporting, killing of snakes (Denver), subornation of perjury (Milwaukee) and grave robbery in a southern city.”

   After an evening of gambling and drinking, Phelps wakes up the next morning in bed with a young lady whose father had sued Kent for libel. Worse, Phelps discovers that during the night, a total blank to him, he married the young lady, her father had been murdered, probably strangled but also shot twice and horribly mutilated, after which the murderer had painted a false face on what was left of the corpse’s real face.

   As usual, there are lots of suspects, all of whom seem to have been busy getting in each other’s way at the scene of the crime. Phelps investigates, when he isn’t busy getting sloshed. However, it is Kent, who has an odd fascination for waxing his nails, who discovers the murderer.

   Nothing special here, though it has its amusing moments. Childerness wrote one more mystery, Too Many Murderers (Phoenix Press; 1944); maybe he got better.