Thu 24 Sep 2009
A Review by Bob Schneider: MERLDA MACE – Motto for Murder.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[3] Comments
MERLDA MACE – Motto for Murder. Messner, hardcover, 1943. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1943. Digest paperback: Crestwood / Black Cat Detective #17, 1945 (abridged).
Motto for Murder was one of a trio of murder mysteries written by Merlda Mace during the 1940’s. The detective she deploys in this story is Timothy J. O’Neil better known as Tip to his friends. He is a 26 year old “special investigator” for Barnes and Gleason, a New York City investment firm.
How he got this job is one of the big mysteries of this book since he readily admits that he is not much of an investigator and his performance during the story bears this out.
This is, in essence, a country house mystery. The house is an isolated mansion located in the mountains of northern New York State near Lake Placid. The controlling and quite unpleasant matriarch of a wealthy family has gathered her extended family to tell them that she has screwed them out of their inheritances. A snowstorm descends on the region and several murders occur during a long Christmas weekend.
This seems to me like a combination of a mediocre Mignon G. Eberhart mystery and a bad Ellery Queen mystery. The author can put words and sentences and paragraphs together in a coherent manner but the book, on the whole, is a disappointment.
The physical and character clues are not first rate, and the author employs a HIBK technique that serves no valid storytelling purpose. Since the characters insisted on wandering around in the dark, leaving their bedrooms unlocked at night and napping in vulnerable spots, the killer did not have too much trouble carrying out the murders. The “mottos” from the title of the story refer to fortune-cookie type candies wrapped in little papers containing sayings which play a small part in the solution.
Merlda Mace was a pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy. Apparently “Tip” O’Neil is not a series character, but according to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, Mace’s other two mysteries utilize a female sleuth called Christine Anderson (the ‘blonde’ in Blondes Don’t Cry).
Bibliographic data: [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV]
MACE, MERLDA. Pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy, 1910?-1990?
Headlong for Murder (n.) Messner 1943 [Christine Anderson; Connecticut]
Motto for Murder (n.) Messner 1943 [New York]
Blondes Don’t Cry (n.) Messner 1945 [Christine Anderson; Washington, D.C.]
September 24th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Merlda Mace is a completely unknown writer to me. This review is very informative.
Looked her up in THE ANTHONY BOUCHER CHRONICLES. Boucher reviews all 3 books, and the first two in scathingly negative terms; the third “Blondes Don’t Cry” mildly mixed.
He points out that heroine Christine Anderson in “Headlong for Murder” acts with the same reckless stupidity Bob noticed in the characters in “Motto for Murder”. In fact, Boucher calls Christine an “impetuous dope” (ouch!)
September 24th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
We take it for granted when we read the masters of this sort of tale, and then we read one like this and realize just how hard they are to write and write well.
I recall reading somewhere that Craig Rice always wanted to do a classical old house mystery, replete with the old lady in the wheelchair who keeps getting up and wandering around when everyone is asleep, the supposed “ghost,” the mad killer, and the complete Old Dark House/Cat and the Canary crew as well as the classic gathering of the suspects to explain the whole thing.
Somewhere I have about four chapters of one I started and abandoned (about four times come to think of it) — replete with the isolated house, a storm, a mysterious stranger who shows up at the gate in only one shoe (classical reference — at least a Ray Harryhausen classical reference), and one by one the bodies collect as the storm grows more fierce … but the fact no one publishes them any more sort of cooled me on the idea.
But it did give me a greater appreciation for how tightly these have to be plotted and written to work well — and how quickly they can go wrong.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Boucher’s mini-reviews are very brief (just two sentences each).
So Bob Schneider’s review above is likely the most anyone has written about Merlda Mace. It is is good that her place in mystery history is made clearer.
It can be very interesting to see what little known writers are up to, in different eras.