Sun 12 Feb 2012
ROMAN McDOUGALD – Lady Without Mercy. Simon & Schuster/Inner Sanctum Mystery, hardcover, 1948. No paperback edition.
An obscure book by an obscure author. There are only five copies available on ABE, for example, but the most any one of them will set you back is $14, including postage, which means not only is the supply low, but so is the demand. Is it worth such a meager outlay? With some qualifications, I’d say yes.
But first, let’s talk about the author. There are six books listed to his credit in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, all published between 1944 and 1950, with three of them having Philip Cabot as the leading character. I’ve not read any, but one source I found online called him a private detective, a fact that interests me, but it’s also one I can’t confirm.
As for Lady Without Mercy, in many regards, it reads like a gothic romance, much like those that were all the rage in paperback through the 1960s and 70s, and truthfully I was all but ready to give up on it very early on, not knowing where the story was going and not having much of a reason to care.
I didn’t make a special note of a particular passage to show you to demonstrate this, so here’s one I’ve just now chosen at random. The story is told largely from Linda Travers’ perspective, and she’s only just arrived at the home of Kirk Ormond, the man she loves. Unfortunately he’s married, to a woman whose long expected death from leukemia has not occurred in three years since it was diagnosed. From page 11:
She is being taken up to a room which Rita, the ill woman, had chosen for her at the last minute. Alan is Dr. Wall, the husband of her half-sister, Isabel. Also in the house are Alan and Isabel’s 16-year-old twin daughters; Kirk’s sister; the housekeeper; and Alice Coulter, sort of a companion to Rita, and who has been encouraging her in an obsessive interest in the occult.
Adding to the extremely atmospheric nature of the tale are some very strange facts. No one knows how Rita has managed to postpone death so long, and in so doing, has managed to keep Linda and Kirk apart. What’s more — and here’s where things begin to get interesting — after a recent attack of her illness that Alan did not believe Rita would survive, she managed to pull through, and at the exact moment when she began to recover, her favorite pet dog died.
When Linda finds a bottle of poison in her room, after being wakened by an intruder during the night, she finds the idea of using it to rid herself of her rival irresistible. Each time she makes the attempt, however, Rita mysteriously survives, and even more ominously, another member of this extended household dies instead. Kirk, Linda’s lover, is of no help. He’s a mess, through and through, an utter weakling. What Linda sees in him, one can only wonder.
As for Miss Coulter … well, perhaps I’ve said enough. You’ll have to read the book for yourself to learn more, and if you’re a fan of hard-boiled fiction, you probably quit reading this review long ago. Suffice it to say, though, this is one the more unique murder mysteries I’ve ever had the fortuitous opportunity to read, and I’m glad I did.
February 12th, 2012 at 3:29 am
I don’t know when Kirkus reviews became available online, nor how many there are, but I’ve come across the one they published for this book.
Check it out, if you’re interested, at
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/roman-mcdougald-2/lady-without-mercy/#review
I think it’s OK to print one line of it under the Fair Use doctrine:
“Suspenseful to spooky.”
It is indeed, and maybe even spookier than suspenseful.
February 12th, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Steve,
Thank you for a good review!
I’ve never heard of Roman McDougald. Will definitely be checking him out.
February 12th, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Jamie Sturgeon sent me links to two photos of the author. The first is a full face closeup:
http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/LHP&CISOPTR=10&CISOBOX=1&REC=2
The second shows him sitting in front of several shelves filled with books:
http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/LHP&CISOPTR=12&CISOBOX=1&REC=8
He also discovered an online newspaper clipping about the author, who seems to have been known by friends and relatives as Miller McDougald (Miller being his middle name), along with some other biographical information. It can be found here:
http://1000memories.com/joey-crosslin-076351/shoebox/62411
Thanks, Jamie!
February 12th, 2012 at 6:39 pm
The clipping above describes McDougald’s approach to writing mysteries, which reminded me of something I’d meant to include in my review, but it ran long and I never did.
The early pages consist (as many mysteries do) of introducing the characters and getting the reader familiar with them. If you go back and look, you’ll see that I took some care to describe them one by one in my own comments.
But as I was reading through the opening scenes, I remembering wondering to myself why this particular set of characters? What kind of vivid imagination would come up with such a strange accumulation of people, all in one house?
It turns out that each and every one has an important part of the story. Each one has a role to play, and each one fits into its place in the overall jigsaw puzzle perfectly.
There was some thought put into the plot, in other words, and even though it’s not really my favorite kind of story, I think that the work put into putting the pieces together is what I appreciated most.
February 13th, 2012 at 7:37 am
For some reason the link I sent (given above) doesn’t work properly now, here’s one to a smaller version of the clipping:
http://1000memories.com/joey-crosslin-076351/shoebox