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.

ROMAN McDOUGALD Lady Without Mercy

   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:

   As Linda went upstairs with Mrs. Seitz [the housekeeper], she reflected that Alan’s words had been like the last, deliberate move in a subtle game whose implications had already become to frighten her. But then, she told herself, she might easily be imagining all this. She must not let a mere intuition run away with her. She would have to be quite rational about it, accepting the fact itself without any reservation of dread. Nobody would try to get in…

   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.