Sun 27 Oct 2019
Archived PI Mystery Review: PHILLIPS LORE – The Looking Glass Murders.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
PHILLIPS LORE – The Looking Glass Murders. Leo Roi #3. Playboy Press, paperback original, 1980.
The first Leo Roi detective mystery, Who Killed the Pie Man [reviewed here by fellow blogger J. F. Norris], was published in hardcover in 1975 by Saturday Review Books. Nothing further was heard about him until earlier this year when Playboy Press reprinted the book in paperback. It is now fairly obvious that Lore has had a few more Roi stories stored away in a trunk somewhere since then, for two more in the series have suddenly appeared in rapid succession, both as Playboy paperback originals. (So fast, in fact, that I still haven’t seen a copy of what apparently is the second in the series, Murder Behind Closed Doors.)
Leo Roi is not a private eye, in the strictest meaning of the term, as he himself would gladly tell you. He is an investigative attorney. But as with Perry Mason, there is very little difference. He is also, excuse the expression, filthy rich. I do not mind this. I am only a little jealous, but the continuing details of his home furnishings, his wardrobe, his fleet of automobiles, these I find boring. You know?
He is married. Happily so, and his wife Christina actively helps him with his cases, They are also actively trying to start a family. This is boring too.
The case itself is not without interest. A male middle-aged professor has been living with a student, a coed, also very happily. She is murdered (her name is Alice…), and he (his name is Charles Dodo) is accused.
Leo Roi is slick, and the D.A. is dumb. And I hate books in which the culprit is known by everyone but the reader and he is caught by he simple expedient of placing some human bait in a trap.
However, any detective who has the theory Leo Roi has about the reasons behind the decline of American society that he expresses on pages 44 and 45 should definitely not stay unread. It’s just unfortunate that the author who wrote that passage doesn’t write very good mysteries.
Bibliographic Note: I did not know this at the time I wrote this review, or I’m sure I would have mentioned it. Phillips Lore was a pen name of Terrence Lore Smith, (1942-1988), who has four books in Hubin under his own name, two with a series character named Webster Daniels, one of which, The Thief Who Came to Dinner, was the basis for the movie of the same title.
October 27th, 2019 at 2:01 pm
While not impossible to find, there really aren’t many copies of this book offered for sale online, and not a single photo of the cover that I could use.
Reading this old review now, I kind of wonder why I didn’t talk about Alice and the looking glass connection a lot more than I did, which was only in passing.
UPDATE. Thanks to J. F. Norris, I now have a photo image of the cover of this one, which I’ve just added to the review.
October 28th, 2019 at 1:40 am
This was the only one of the Leo Roi mysteries I didn’t read (I also read and liked THE THIEF WHO CAME TO DINNER), though I grant the point that the mystery element could have been stronger in the ones I did. For me they read the way shows like BURKE’S LAW used to play, a slick entertaining time passer that was sometimes what I wanted.
I won’t mention the authors or the books, but there is a series I enjoy currently I have reviewed here that I read for much the same reason.
I didn’t find the private life element too distracting considering them to be the equivalent of the North’s cats, Roger West’s boys, or the Nick and Nora style flirtation from the movies (not half as clever obviously) and series. I suspect if the series had continued I might have grown as tired of it as I did the Spenser and Susan Silverman business, but it didn’t and I didn’t have the chance to.
There is something to be said for not overstaying your welcome when it comes to light entertainment.
October 28th, 2019 at 7:37 pm
I will be looking for this one, or Lore’s other two, as I work my way through my collection, continuing to downsize as I go. I’m curious to see if I have the same opinion of it. Sometimes books change over the years. Sometimes I do.
October 29th, 2019 at 1:15 am
If it hadn’t been for the horrific car accident that killed the writer I think we would have seen more books. He was only in his mid 40s when he died. Probably more about Webster Daniels, not Leo Roi. There were two about Daniels prior to his death and the Ryan O’Neal movie was fairly popular at the time. Leo Roi is not my favorite series character, I made fun in my review of the silly wardrobe updates that filled the books and dated them so badly. Very 70s in his fashion tastes, and tacky “fashion†at that! Murder Behind Closed Doors is a locked room murder mystery and, for what they are, is the best of the three.
I really only like these books because they are set in Evanston and feature inside jokes about that university town which I practically live in. My home since 2009 is in Rogers Park, the farthest northeastern neighborhood of Chicago. Lake Michigan and the Evanston border are a short walk from my front door. I’ve spent lots of time in Evanston since I moved to Chicago in 1986, mostly visiting the numerous used book stores that were there over the years. Now there are only two left worth frequenting out of more than a dozen that existed way back when. The best of the lot (and sadly missed) shut its doors over seven years ago.
October 29th, 2019 at 8:44 am
Thanks for the cover image of LOOKING GLASS that you sent me, John. I don’t care for “naked” reviews, either, so I was happy to be able to add it to this one.
I have been looking for more information about Lore/Smith, and besides reading about his death in the auto accident you mention, I have discovered that he was the son of Charles Merrill Smith, who was also a mystery writer. The latter was the author of six books featuring Reverend C. P. “Con†Randollph as the leading character, a series set in Chicago. Also something I didn’t know, or at least I hadn’t remembered, was that t son Terence helped finish the sixth one, Reverend Randollph and the Splendid Samaritan (Putnam, 1986), after his father died the year before.