THE BACKWARD REVIEWER
William F. Deeck


JAMES RONALD Murder in the Family

JAMES RONALD – Murder in the Family. Lippincott, US, hardcover, 1940; Mercury Mystery #172, digest-sized paperback, abridged, 1952, as The Murder in Gay Ladies. Belmont Books 90-303, paperback, abridged, 1964. First published in the UK: Lane, hardcover, 1936. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1949. Film: Fox British, 1938.

   Stephen Osborne has just lost his job, not a good one and not one he particularly enjoyed. But at 50-some years of age in the Depression era and with no savings, he doesn’t know how he’s going to provide for his large family except by asking his sister, a wealthy woman, to help him financially.

   Unfortunately, Octavia Osborne is a most unpleasant person. During her annual visit to Stephen’s home, she not only refuses to help but tells the family that she is writing all of them out of her will.

JAMES RONALD Murder in the Family

   Bad timing on her part, for while she is sitting in a room with her niece, who is engrossed in a book, someone comes in and chokes her, causing death by heart failure.

   One of the family, or the family’s loyal and loving housekeeper, must have done it. The only other occupant of the house, Octavia’s companion, who was to be left £1,000 a year in the new will, wouldn’t have done it and, since she was locked in her room, couldn’t have done it. There are a couple of other suspects, but they aren’t taken seriously.

   The mystery is a good one, solved by the family’s ne’er-do-well uncle. But the primary focus is on a close, caring. family being torn asunder by a voracious press, local busybodies, and ghoulish gawkers. Of course, such a thing couldn’t happen today; the family members would be stumbling over themselves giving interviews to television and the press, airing their own soiled linen.

— From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 12, No. 4, Fall 1990.



Editorial Comment: Except for one novel published in 1949, James Ronald’s mystery-writing career extended from 1932 to 1941, including six books in the 1930s as by Michael Crombie. Many of his books never appeared in the US, and when they were, they were often published by such second-tier outfits such as Mystery House and Phoenix Press. One then wonders why this particular book was reprinted so often.