EDWIN LANHAM – Politics Is Murder. Harcourt Brace & Co., hardcover, 1947. Bantam #746, paperback, 1950.

   Since he would rather be playing chess, Jeff Stover is unhappy with his unsought appointment to the New York City Council. Still, it does give him a chance to set the cat — one Sachem McKeever. presently stuffed — among the pigeons by proposing a law to change the name of McKeever Place to Niebach Square, Niebach being his deceased predecessor.

   A mild new law, one would think. but it makes some people unhappy. so unhappy, in fact, that someone inserts a samurai sword into Stover while he is sitting at his desk in City Hall.

   George Wright, City Hall reporter, catches Stover’s former fiancee at the scene with blood on her hands. Since he is smitten with her, she must be not guilty. She also isn’t innocent, for while he lies for her, she tells untruths about him.

   A good reporter but a dimbulb is Wright. Luckily there’s an intelligent and incorruptible cop with a long memory to do the real investigating in a good fair-play novel.

Bibliographic Notes:   The cop that Bill referred to in his last paragraph must be Lt. Madigan, who first appeared in print in Slug it Slay (1946), and whose third recorded case was One Murder Too Many (1952). Between 1946 and 1963 Lanham was the author of a total of 12 crime novels listed in Hubin. Throughout his career, he was also a prolific author of serials and short fiction for the slick magazines such as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post. Lanham was also well enough known as a writer of literary fiction to have a page on Wikipedia.