HELEN McCLOY – Who’s Calling? Basil Willing #4. William Morrow, hardcover, 1942, Dell #151, mapback edition [1947]; cover art by Gerald Gregg.

   Dr. Basil Willing, Helen McCloy’s primary (and only) series character appeared in thirteen novels between 1938 and 1980, and at least two short stories. Willing may have the distinction of being the first psychiatrist detective, having a formal connection with the NYPD and perhaps as well with the FBI, and being called upon to help solve cases in which his professional knowledge might come in handy.

   This one begins with a voice on the telephone warning New York night club singer Freda Frey not to accompany her fiancé Archie Cranford down to meet his mother who lives in a small town outside of Washington DC. She goes anyway, in spite of the phone call and in spite of an unspoken hostility from her future mother-in-law, who fears that Archie will settle for less in his life if he marries her.

   Freda is not the victim of a killer, however. Dead instead is Chalkley Winchester, a long lost cousin of Mrs, Cranford and the fussy kind of a man that reminded me of Truman Capote, say, but several years before the latter’s time.

   Working on a degree is psychiatry himself, it is Archie who calls in Dr. Willing to help the police, an event that doesn’t occur until perhaps a third of the way through the book, and it is his expertise that helps determine that the killer is suffering from a split personality disorder. What may make this mystery unique in the annals of detective fiction is that while Willing nor the police know who the killer is, neither does he or she as well.

   I confess I do not know why the killer was continually referred to as a poltergeist. As I understand the  term, that is a undead spirit which manifests itself by making noises   in the night and throwing crockery against the wall.

   Setting aside most of the psychiatric background of the case as only pleasant background noise,, which I did, this is a well-constructed detective puzzle in which all of pieces fit snugly together at the end, against a backdrop of upper middle-class gentility that not so incidentally is part of the killer’s motivation, a nice touch. Not a work of classic stature, say, but it’s one that will do until one of that magnitude comes along.