Sat 3 Aug 2024
A 1001 Midnights Review: RUTH FENISONG – The Butler Died in Brooklyn.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[9] Comments
by Ellen Nehr.
RUTH FENISONG – The Butler Died in Brooklyn.Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover 1943. Mystery Novel Classic #97, digest-sized paperback, 1946/47. Stark House Press, 2-in-1 edition with Murder Runs a Fever, softcover, 2024.
Fenisong wrote thirteen books about New York Police Sergeant (later Inspector) Gridley Nelson from 1942 to 1960. They enjoyed considerable popularity and many were reprinted in paperback. In an era of uneducated but street wise fictional cops, Nelson has just about everything going for him. He is a Princeton graduate with a substantial private income that allows him to hire a full-time housekeeper who lives in Harlem and serves as an information pipeline through her friendships with other servants. This is of enormous value to Nelson since he is frequently assigned to investigate upper-class murders.
In The Butler Died in Brooklyn, tangled upper-class family relationships arc involved when Beulah Fitch Casey Danille Roberts’s longtime butler, Shepard (who had just been fired without cause), is found murdered. “Booming Beulah” has just moved her entire household — including giddy granddaughter Marianne and her twin brothers — from Gramercy Park to a recently converted apartment house to be near her current husband’s antique shop/warehouse.
After another family murder, Nelson’s housekeeper, Sammy, takes it upon herself to answer an ad for a maid in the household. Proper police procedure is followed, with long interrogation of suspects and extensive background checks, while Marianne complicates matters by trying to protect her brothers and getting herself kidnapped. It is the dogged, step-by-step investigation by Nelson, and Sammy behind the scenes, that finally solves the case just in time to prevent another murder.
Fenisong’s books, even the non-series ones like Jenny Kissed Me ( l944), are a mixture of romance and suspense, and provide glimpses of how the other half lives. Her formula of the wealthy young police officer who “speaks the language” has been used by others, but never more successfully. Among Gridley Nelson’s other successful cases are Murder Needs a Face (1942), Deadlock (1952), and Dead Weight (1962).
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
August 3rd, 2024 at 2:05 pm
I miss Ellen Nehr’s reviews of women mystery writers. Ellen loved three-named authors best: Phoebe Atwood Taylor and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.
August 3rd, 2024 at 3:40 pm
George, You’re right. The two you name are just a couple of very good examples, but Ellen loved any number of “two-named” female writers as well. It’s good to see that Stark House is putting so many of all of them back into print.
August 3rd, 2024 at 10:20 pm
I should have read more Fenisong, I generally enjoyed the ones I did read, a bit more grounded in actual procedure than say Rufus King’s similarly well born Lt Valcour or C. Daly King’s Michael Lord.
August 3rd, 2024 at 11:05 pm
“I should have read more” of … (Fill in the blank.) I feel your pain. That’s been my lament ever since I started this blog. Ruth Fenisong included!
August 4th, 2024 at 6:12 am
I’m curious as to which part of the Borough of Churches this one is set in. I like reading books set in Brooklyn, as long as they are accurate. I remember one – not that well, as I don’t remember the book or author – where he used several real, lesser known streets, but didn’t seem to know that the street was one way the wrong way. I really wish I could remember the title and author. I think it was on the late Sue Feder’s list, which I wish I could put my hands on.
August 4th, 2024 at 11:19 am
Jeff: Locale for the action set in Brooklyn is Brooklyn Heights. Specific streets mentioned are Furman Street and Clark Street. I can’t testify as to any Brooklyn accuracy issues, but Fenisong, in her other books, is very accurate regarding Manhattan locations.
August 4th, 2024 at 12:32 pm
Bill. Thanks! Yes, Furman and Clark Streets are in Brooklyn Heights, which is where I thought I remembered the book was set.
We were down there in June. Furman runs almost along the waterfront from Atlantic Avenue up to the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge Park (now).
When we were kids, we went a couple of times to the Hotel St. George, which is on Clark Street. At one point it was the largest hotel in New York. They had a huge saltwater swimming pool where we swam at a summer camp reunion, some (OMG) 60 years ago (plus).
August 4th, 2024 at 11:45 pm
My workaday routine wends its way exactly along that riverine area of Brooklyn (Furman Ave, Atlantic Ave, Flatbush Extension).
What’s more, I reside in the area where the infamous “Last Exit” depicts. It is tough meat. Hardscrabble.
But I myself am not a native-born Brooklynite, so I hesitate to speak up for it. Whadda I know? I’m a transplant. I can’t vouch.
Nevertheless, ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ –as I understand –takes place in North Brooklyn, which is a foreign country to South BK residents. North BK and South BK are deep, bitter, enemies.
The area of BK I regularly criss-cross is the famed environ of Truman Capote, WH Auden, and other long-forgotten sages. That was back in the era when “literature” ruled.
Admittedly, North Brooklyn has Henry Miller and ‘down by the w’ineger woiks’.
But, I tell yew wut. Best crime author writing about Brooklyn I’ve ever seen? Andrew Vachsss. That dude. On point. Scary accurate.
August 5th, 2024 at 12:03 am
p.s. what I mean is North BK –in the era of Henry Miller’s childhood –was much more tough than South BK at the time, which was wealthy mansions and rolling hills. But as the 20th Century wore on, North BK became effeminate and South BK became more a ‘tough guy’ haven and an incubator for the mob lifestyle.