MARGARET SCHERF – The Elk and the Evidence. Rev. Martin Buell #4. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1952.

   Reverend Martin Buell is an Episcopal rector in Farrington, Montana, but some how or another, he always seems to find himself caught up in yet another murder case, The Elk and the Evidence appearing right in the middle of his crime-solving career. Margaret Scherf, the teller of his adventures, as well as those of her other series characters, Grace Severance (4 books), Emily & Henry Bryce (4 books), Lt. Ryan (2 books), as well as a sizable number of standalones, is known for her light humorous approach to writing detective fiction, and the example at hand is no exception.

   The case is threefold. (1) A package of elk meat given to Buell as a gift unaccountably contains a man’s toe. (2) A hunter who was a member of a large hunting party has gone missing. And (3) a girl coming to Montana to vet out a wealthy man as possible marriage material encounters two men in hunting clothes leaving a third man overnight in a lower train berth while on her way home.

   Are the three incidents connected? You bet they are.

   The humor comes quietly in almost every page of the first half of the book – only a smile perhaps, but most detective novels have none. The smiles don’t come from wacky behavior, but largely from Buell’s observation of people and the natural order of things in a small town in which everybody knows everybody else. The girl, a natural redhead, has to be put up in a widower’s spare bedroom, for example, which causes a lot of curiosity.

   This is a lot of fun to read, as you can imagine, but unfortunately the detective end of things is, to coin a word,  disappointing. Reverend Buell tries, but as as a man of the cloth, nothing more, he has no way to conduct any kind of proper investigation. The conclusion tries to tie all the preceding events together, but where all of the facts relevant to a motive came from, it is hard to say. And why the man’s toe was removed is even harder to explain. I didn’t even try to follow.
   

      The Rev. Martin Buell series –

Always Murder a Friend. Doubleday 1948.
Gilbert’s Last Toothache. Doubleday 1949.
The Curious Custard Pie. Doubleday 1950.
The Elk and the Evidence. Doubleday 1952.
The Cautious Overshoes. Doubleday 1956.
Never Turn Your Back. Doubleday 1959.
The Corpse in the Flannel Nightgown. Doubleday 1965.