Wed 9 Mar 2011
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: HELEN REILLY – Death Demands an Audience.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
William F. Deeck
HELEN REILLY – Death Demands an Audience. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1940. Hardcover reprint: Sun Dial Press, 1941. Paperback reprints: Popular Library #7, no date [1943]; Macfadden, 1967; Manor, 1974.
The paperback publisher [Macfadden] implies that this is a novel with some impossible or at least difficult crimes. “One victim was killed in a department store window. Another died before the startled eyes of a policeman on guard duty. The third breathed his last in a crowd of people coming out of a theater.”
The first victim was killed in a department-store-window display, all right, but the display was in the cellar at the time of the crime and was raised with corpse later. The next victim had locked the policeman in a basement, so the cop certainly didn’t see him die. The third death had nothing to do with a theater crowd or any other crowd.
Equally disappointing is the novel itself. The murderer is not only the least likely person but a most unlikely one. Inspector McKee traps the murderer by taking a picture as the fourth murder is attempted. He implies that he knew who it was all the time, but I don’t believe it. A fair mystery with a most unsatisfactory denouement.
Editorial Comments: A long profile of Helen Reilly’s work by Mike Grost can be found on the main Mystery*File website. (Follow the link.) Accompanying Mike’s article is a detailed bibliography I put together for her.
Previously reviewed (by me) on this blog:
The Canvas Dagger (1956) (very short)
The Silver Leopard (1946)
March 9th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
The image that I have provded appears to be the paperback edition that Bill was referring to, but if so, the offending description must have been on the back cover.
(It is not clear to me what the front cover illustrates. It appears to be a ghostly figure standing in a graveyard, but I do not have a copy of the book itself to make out more detail.)
Cover blurbists can be extremely annoying. Most of the time their wrongdoing is in the form of telling you, the reader, too much — way more than you really wanted to know.
In this case what ruffled Bill’s feathers was a blurb that was totally wrong, and worse, promising something — a locked room mystery — that was not there.
March 9th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
I see that I forgot to include a question that occurred to me while I was formatting this review for posting.
How does Helen Reilly’s work stack up with some of the other female writers of the 1930s and 40s we were discussing earlier? Leslie Ford, Mabel Seeley, Mignon Eberhart and others.
Reilly wrote 35 or so mysteries under her own name, and three more as Kieran Abbey, in the time period from 1930 to 1962. At the time I’d say she was a popular mid-list writer, with a very consistent output. (Even though Bill didn’t care for this one.)
March 9th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
To some extent Reilly was all over the map. Her best books are very good to well above average and her worst only average and not really bad. If she had been a bit more consistent she might have been better remembered.
I recall some well written books I enjoyed and some I didn’t care as much for, but I also recall learning fairly early that you never knew which you were going to get.
McKee was an attractive sleuth though and when he and Reilly were both at their best the books were reliable mid list mystery fare — readable and enjoyable even if they weren’t likely to change your life or improve your mind.
Mike
You mentioned in your article her references to Hans Gross. I wonder if that was one of the things that got her labeled as being in the Van Dine school. Vance dearly loved to bring Gross book into the conversation — notably in THE BISHOP MURDER CASE where Gross ideas figure in the solution.
I’ll grant I thought of the books as mostly being in the police procedural school if a bit more in the British version than the tougher American style.
March 10th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
David: “I recall some well written books I enjoyed and some I didn’t care as much for, but I also recall learning fairly early that you never knew which you were going to get.”
This is my experience, too!
David, I’m glad you like Reilly. At her best, she was this memorably atmospheric writer. She is also sui generis, offering readers an unusual experience you just can’t get in other authors.
I only dimly remember Death Demands an Audience. I liked the whole department-store-window. It’s an example of the complex, off trail architecture that often shows up in the Golden Age. But if memory serves, the rest of the novel is not so good.
I nearly doubled the original Reilly web-site article in size, since it was reprinted on MYSTERY*FILE. A couple of years ago, some Japanese fans asked permission to translate it into Japanese. Apparently, Reilly is popular there.